I’ve been playing around with the free-to-use InstaMAT program, which has a feature for converting a single flat image texture to an array of Blinn-Phong materials, and also PBR materials. Just getting signed up for the Pioneer license was a major headache (screaming was involved). Then I discovered that the quick “Materialize Image” workflow adds unwanted alpha channels, and bulk uploads don’t strip out the alphas the way single uploads does. I should send a note to the Firestorm team on that…
Here’s the eventual result: 2 grey weathered crates, the one on the left looks slightly more detailed. Whoo!
https://instamaterial.com/
There’s quite a few of my favorite, go-to-textures that are modifiable, so once I figure out the smoothest process (even if I have to fix transparency in GIMP) I may use that Materialize trick. There’s also a Blender plug-in provided free by InstaMAT, which I also need to play with.
It was a good two days of screaming, though. The main issue was not clicking on the RIGHT side of the screen to log in after getting my Pioneer license. The program is free to use commercially as long as the user makes less than $100,000 income from using it. No problem there.
