Importing max vertex alpha for blending two textures

Hey there,

  1. i’ve a short question which could save me some time on my current work. I want to know if its possible to import the painited vertex alpha information from max into ue4 and define exactly the black values to texture (1) and the white value to texture (2). And when it’s possible how to export and use it in ue4?

  2. I know the way of blending two textures in ue4 itself. but it is possible to bake an alpha mask out of this painted stuff? i ask this because if i want to create a blending look with not final textures i need to do the same with final ones again. if it would be possible to save the first “test”-paint directly i could just reassign the final textures to it and all would be done.

I hope you get what iam looking for :slight_smile:

greetz

yes vertex colors are exported with your mesh in the FBX file. use a vertex color node in the material editor (you have access to RGBA in the vertex color information if you need vertex colors for more than one task) and feed that into a linear interpolate node between your two texture samples.

Ok thanks so far. but the other important point is if iam able to save painted vertex informationen with 2 different textures in ue4 itself.

I don’t know what you mean by that

Ok let me tell you this in another way. For example:

Iam loading two textures into UE4 and set them up the right way with a lerp node and so on to let the first texture blend over the second one. When i paint now then iam changeing the look of the base texture with the blending one. Can i save these blending information out to create a mask of it and reuse it later on with different materials?

The idea behind it is to take my blending informations as a mask directly from ue4 instead of doing this with the vertex information that max is giving me.

I hope you could follow me now and see what i meant.

Greetz

If I am understanding properly you want to be able to save out a mask of the way you painted in the texture(2) over your texture(1) on your model.
That… is not possible as far as I know.

I don’t know of a way to export your vertex colors as texture from UE4, but I know of a work around. Make a duplicate of your mesh. Make an instance of your material with parameters that let you swap the two textures you want to be able to change.
Then assign that new instance to the duplicated mesh. Change your textures, paint your vertex colors how you would like them to be changed and then save that vertex color information to the mesh. Do this for each variation you need.

I assume you have no access to Max? Because you CAN paint vertex colors in max and then export them to a texture. At least you can in Maya.

Edit: Correction, Read posts bellow.

You can have FOUR vertex color channels. RGBA. What was that again about not understanding?

You can export from Max vertex info the issue is max compared to Maya has a limitation (or had) and couldn’t export more than 1 channel.

Now back to the actual giving info side, If you add a vertex paint to your mesh you can add layers thus adding more vertex, Just remember that they have to be RGBA and you need to have the actual polys in order to support those different colors. You need the other layers to be set as multiply and their underlying color MUST be white, Also you cannot paint over vertices that already have a color but white or your new colors wont show.

An example http://prntscr.com/5bpg2o

That should help with the initial argument now yes you can use it to blend more than 1 textures correcting my previous mistake.
Maybe use a lerp.

ok so what’s stopping you from painting one configuration, exporting it, painting the next exporting it…

btw it was my bad as i was talking about baking the vertex colors not exporting.