Phonodroid 2.1 WIP: Update on sticker progress
Added 2022-11-18 23:18:38 +0000 UTCHello! I've been racking my brain on how to make the sticker idea work without requiring people less experienced with blender to have to touch the weight painting functions, given their whole point was to allow customization without the complexity of modeling or texturing from scratch. I think I've come up with a setup im pretty happy with now and requires only learning how to transform objects in blender, extremely basic UV editing, and performing the same actions as adding the other pre-made alternate parts to the avatar.
You start out with a dummy file like this. Each sticker is pre-weighted to the bone labeled in their object name and on the sticker itself (until replaced with a proper sticker image).
Here's where you'd wanna add the sticker image, normal, and specular maps to the sticker material, the UV process is as simple as just selecting the entire sticker mesh and moving the square representing its UVs over the sticker you want and scaling it correctly.
From there you can postion, duplicate, rotate, do whatever you want with the sticker as long as you keep it to the section of the phonodroid its weighted to. The shrinkwrap modifier will handle the smooth application to the surface.
Finally, join all the stickers into one object, apply the shrinkwrap modifier, and save the file as a new blend separate from the dummy file (so you dont overwrite it!). After that you can just append it to your main avatar and follow the same steps as any other alternate part!
I'm making a base sticker sheet to release with the sticker files to give something for people to use and to act as an example for how the normal and specular maps should be laid out for other people making their own! There will also be basic universal maps for people that dont want to worry about those and just want to use a single image for color and alpha.
