Does SCS Bake Ambient Occlusion into Vertex Colors?

[noone1520]

I think I've figured out how to apply SCS materials to my models, but the thing I'm missing is the ambient occlusion bake. In the old tutorials, SCS says to bake AO into the vertex colors, but as far as I've seen, that feature was removed from blender, and now you need an addon to do it. Is this still how SCS does the ambient occlusion? How would I do this?

When I add a base texture, an alert shows up that says "Vertex color layer(s) missing!" and it lets me add them then. How do I add them and bake ambient occlusion to them?

If anyone can help, I'd be really grateful.

[Madkine]

SCS mostly doesn't use Blender, they use Maya.

[noone1520]

So basically the tutorials are out of date and SCS moved on to better software? So where's that leave people who want to learn how to make mods?

It'd be nice if the whole thing was easier, cuz I'd have definitely made a bunch of cool stuff. I think I'm better off reaching this dead end early though.

[plykkegaard]

Afaik SCS has used Maya for many years
Blender is for modding the game as Maya is a bit costly

[noone1520]

Yeah, but SCS needs to update their blender tutorials because things have changed. Their tutorials aren't much help at all anymore.

SCS's youtube channel has a seven episode playlist on 3D modeling an accessory, but they used Maya, so how does that help us mod the game? We can't afford Maya. They have people working there who use blender, but they do a series of streams using Maya. I don't get it. Who were those videos for?

[FierbetoN]

Software used has been explained many times already. They can all do the same stuff, except for the final process which they do in Maya. Look in the background on the latest coaches blog and you'll see only Blender.

Anyway, for this purpose it's irrelevant, you can get similar or same results, vertex baking was added back a long time ago, you're probably on an old version. I suggest you try and learn what vertex color layers, lightmaps, bakes etc actually are and do instead of relying on tutorials, SCS isn't doing anything unique.

They don't really bake simple AO anymore, the game does it anyway, instead they do a top-shaded lightmap bake, something like this. For this I usually add a sun light source (strength of 1, angle of 135), switch to Cycles, create a basic full white Material, set it as material override in View Layer Properties, enable AO (or fast GI approximation, depends on version) in Render Properties, and bake (Combined) to vertex layer. Add a plane under it if you wish for bottom shading. It differs even between ingame models so set it up to your liking.

[noone1520]

Hey, FierbetoN, thank you so much for your reply; you've given me exactly what I was looking for.

I'm using blender 3.6 LTS, and you're saying vertex baking is back in the newer versions?

I will take your advice and try to learn those things if the time comes. I'm such a noob at this stuff, I really am clueless at this point.

I think I have other issues to deal with first though, because I used the "check geometry" thing in the SCS blender tools, and my models have over three thousand degenerated polygons, and I have no idea how to fix that, so I don't think I should even worry about baking or materials until I can make good models.

Honestly, it's so much to learn, and I'm not technically inclined to begin with, so it might just be out of reach for me. I definitely couldn't figure it out on my own.

[Dotec]

I created a tutorial few years ago

https://dotec3d.eu/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4

[noone1520]

Thank you Dotec, that's amazing, just what I needed.