Packing Maps into Channels for Export

David Walters · August 2012

Hi Neil,

Is it possible to export a normal map with the luminosity/greyscale of another map packed into the alpha channel?

At the moment packing specular maps into normals is a manual process I have to do in Photoshop when exporting and it's a bit tedious so I was hoping I'm just not seeing this feature in the new UI (I have a faint recollection of this being available in 1.3.1) or that you could add this for us.

I think having a general 'what map shall I use for the alpha channel?' ability - where the default is the alpha channel of the source map, perhaps - would be great appreciated. By me at least

Apologies if I'm just being blind and it's there already!

Regards,
David

RSI · August 2012

David Walters wrote:

Hi Neil,

Is it possible to export a normal map with the luminosity/greyscale of another map packed into the alpha channel?

Apologies if I'm just being blind and it's there already!

Hi David,

It's easy to do. No apologies needed.

1. Drag a map in the map grid (left mouse + drag)

2. Now press and HOLD the SHIFT key. The map will become embeddable.

3. While holding shift, drag the map over a map to embed it in.

4. Drop it by releasing the left mouse button. The channel mixer will pop up. Check any channel that you want to embed then left mouse drag its destination to any channel it will be embedded in.

5. Accept the changes in the channel mixer (ENTER). You will now see a thumbnail of the map indicating it is embedded in the map. You can embed up to 4 maps in a single map. Drag the embedded thumbnail off of the map to un-embed it... or place it on a different map. Double click the embedded map icon to make changes.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,
Neil

David Walters · August 2012

That's perfect, thanks for the tutorial!

Regards,
David

Packing Maps into Channels for Export

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