Create Texture Maps in Blender for Papervision3D Models

Creating texture maps for your 3D models can be difficult. Worse, using features such as dynamic lighting can also significantly reduce the performance of your real-time models. One easy way to create some decent textures is to pre-render them complete with lighting, shadows, and calculated surfaces in Blender, then simply map them to your models.

Creating the texture map in Blender is a relatively straight forward process. Create your models and map your materials as you normally would. Once you have your model setup complete with textures and lighting, use the following steps to export a texture to map to  that same model exported to Papervision3D.

• Open the U/V editor and create a new image. This image may be any size you wish.
• Switch to "Edit Mode" on your model and select all faces.
• Sometimes the U/V edit will switch back to another texture mapped to this object, if that occurs, simply re-select your new, untitled image.
• Press the 'u' key in your model window and choose "Unwrap (Smart Projections)".
• Set an Island Margin of 0.005.
• Press "Ok" and you will see all of the faces unwrapped into your new texture.
• Press F10 and choose the Render options you want. Once you are satisfied, choose Render -> Bake Render Meshes -> Full Render from the menu at the top.
• You should now see your mesh's surfaces rendered into your new texture. Save your texture.
• At this point, you should also export your mesh again to ensure that that U/V coordinates in your exported mesh match those required to fit your new texture.

At this point you should have a newly exported mesh and a texture to map on to your mesh.

Extra Tips

• Once you have rendered your texture, switch to the Textured view on your model window to see what your results should look like.
• If you already have textures mapped to your mesh, you will likely need to create a new UV Texture map for this texture to export. You can add that new UV Texture in the Editing button window (F9) with your mesh selected.
• You can use this technique to pre-render textures or to simply map existing textures that you've create in Gimp or some other image editor. Simply map your model to your existing textures as you would to render the scene.