Shockwave wrote:
no i dont mean textures when i say shaders... err... i mean the shadows on the knife's metal for example. im pretty skilled at gimp but i just dont know how to make shadows like they really are in the real life.
Actually, it's possible to precompute the shadows in Blender, apply them to the UV map, then export them as a graymap and later merge the diffuse map (colored texture) with such a graymap.
That doesn't make much sense with directional lighting, but if you use ambient occlusion for rendering, such a graymap would make the end result look really pretty.
Maybe I'll write a tutorial for that at some point, but right now, I'm swamped with work..
Also, one could use the builtin procedural shaders of Blender and generate a texture out of them. So if you for example wanted a wooden club, you could theoretically use the wood shader for your model, render that to texture and later use it.
By the way, Blender lets you paint on the UV map and see the changes in real-time.
To do this (BEFORE inverting normals or scaling up, otherwise, what you see in 3D view won't be helpful), middle-click on the bottom border of your 3D window.
Choose "Split area".
Click.
Change the resulting right viewport to UV/Image Editor.
Generate the UV map (in the 3D window, press F, press U, "Unwrap(smart projections)".
In the Image Editor, choose "Image -> New...", 512x512.
Then "View -> Update Automatically".
Then "Image -> Texture Painting".
Paint your stuff. The painting properties can be seen via "View -> Paint Tool...".
You can also select distinct faces in the left 3D view with rightclick, they'll be marked in the Image editor.
And you can transform the UV coordinates in the Image Editor, you have to be out of texture painting mode though. Then, you can select UV coordinates and translate them, rotate groups of selected coords or scale them.
When you're done, "Image -> Save As...". There's your texture! Don't forget to mirror it if you want to use it as a .solid texture though.
It's easier to do texture painting that way, at least to get basic stuff right. Detailed markings, like flaws of a blade, should be painted with Gimp or similar, obviously.
Edit: Looks like this then:
Really useful!