I have a small question in viewport.
- Can I preview baked textures in the viewport model ?
- Can I preview specific channels of a composited layer (like Normal and AO channel) in the viewport model ?
Thanks!
Hello @Rapilias
You can press “C” to change the active channel that is being displayed in the viewport. Press “M” to go back to the output material view. This works in all project types, even in the canvas!
Not all bake data can be viewed this way, if you want to quickly preview another bake texture you can do it by simply assigning it to a layer. Make sure to set the layer projection type to “UV”
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The viewport channel switching is working as intended. Thanks!
It’s unfortunate that the preview of the baked data can’t be displayed with channel switching, but I was able to create a dedicated node instead to reduce the hassle.
Cheers to a great node system integration!
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That’s awesome! Cool node idea!
Wow @Rapilias that’s really nice 
It’s a great idea I’ll include this as a utility node in MAT.
It looks like you assigned those images yourself, you actually don’t have to.
There are some awesome features of the layering engine, like MAT itself, it understands semantics. The node workflow + layering integration gets even better 
Check this out this is awesome:
In the GIF you can see that the node doesn’t have a seed (it doesn’t need it, right, it’s not procedural) and it also does not show the inputs for the bake textures - yet - it magically works.
How does this work?
First the easy, thing, hiding the seed. You can do that in your graph’s meta data. Simply disable “Expose Seed”:
How does the graph know what to do with the parameters and automatic layering connections?
It’s easy as well, simply make sure to name your inputs like this:
Also, ideally, you’d assign the “MeshBakeData” category to all those inputs, that’s our convention. Because if you do that, you’ll get…
Support for “Link Category” mode for free on top!
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Yes,Automatic association of baked textures is exactly the information I sought when creating this node!
I am so glad to hear that there is a way to do that!
However, I feel a bit sad that this association is being determined by a string of manual input. (I already entered AmbientOcc'u'lusion twice by mistake. Of course, it was me being stupid.)
It would be nice if in the future these could be selected from a drop-down in the tool as “reserved variables (there may be a more appropriate name)” or the name could be copied.
At any rate, this association makes iteration faster. Thanks!
We sincerely look forward to having these details added to the documentation.
I think there should be auto-complete for those parameters!
But we only enabled it for output variables. I think we should enable it for input parameters as well. I’ll create a ticket!
In any case, I’d recommend you to simply export the outputs of another material node. This way you also have the right colorspace and meta data!
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