Bake AO map with alpha

[Zakxaev68]

I'm at the point of learning how the whole bake process works. Current scenario? My AO map lacks alpha channel, pure white. Do I wonder why... Perhaps the alpha has to be made separately from the baking? Perhaps one has to do it in Photoshop. Perhaps its a whole different world of "I'll take your sanity away"... Blender 2.81

Nothing comes up in a Google search about AO masks as well.

[SiSL]

Alpha is specularity map. Yes, it has to be done via Image Processing software like GIMP. Photoshop etc, manually by hand.

[Zakxaev68]

Say you have to make it out of the AO texture? What the... hook, man.

Only
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will take me ages. Huuuuuh!

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Maybe not. If I understood correctly, it should be fairly easy:

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Inverted the AO texture, then boosted the saturation. Don't blame me on the AO mess, I don't know a proper technique to unwrap in an organized, clean way.

[SiSL]

Alpha on general dif.spec textures defines how this surface will shine So darker color in alpha, less shiny...white full shiny...

[Zakxaev68]

I plan to use this on truckpaint texture. After all it's the Range T plastic part (grille above) I'm aiming to turn painted with proper shading. Its a good truck to learn to do things anyhow.

[xXCARL1992Xx]

the plastic parts of the Range T already have an AO, SCS just vertex painted them black

when i do AO textures i normally dont do any alpha work on it and they work without problem for me

[Zakxaev68]

Yep, Carl, they have however you lose the fake shadows when you change the vertex paint. I found out if I AO bake myself, I can match the new paint with truck paint much better w/o vertex painting by hand. Not gonna talk about vertexp baking, never did it before, no idea how it works.

My biggest guess why they vertex painted them black > they used the AO alpha to determine the shading opacity. Could be totally wrong.

[xXCARL1992Xx]

the Range T uses very little vertex paint for AO, all details are on the textures, when i did my parts i had to do a bit of touch up by hand but the textures from SCS do work good

but that the alpha of the AO also has a meaning is new for me, i never bothered to do it or conversion tools did it for me, in paint.net i have a plugin to create an alpha from the image itself, GIMP should also have a function for it but i seldom use it, maybe one of those can help