an addon for blending vertex color layers into a single target

DOWNLOAD

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bake_vertex_diffuse.py

github

INSTALLATION

Install the addon by placing it in the scripts/addons directory or by clicking "install from file" in user preferences. Once installed, make sure it's activated. The addon is called "Render: Vertex Diffuse Bake"

WHY VERTEX COLORS

Vertex colors are floats stored in the mesh data along with the position data. They can be used to add color variation to textured models, add lighting or ambient occlusion effects to models, or to store special information that a shader uses (vertex alpha, texture splatting, etc.), many games use vertex colors almost exclusively, and in the right hands it can be a memorable art style.

Blender has nice tools for manually painting vertex colors on a mesh, and you can render bake to a vertex color target which works well for ambient occlusion or lighting renders, but it's a lot of setup to get a final result of lighting, ambient occlusion, and color data baked together in the right amounts.

I decided to make a compositor for vertex color layers, an addon that could mix and blend instances of the vcol layer data and compile them into a single target.

USAGE

ISSUES

overlay blending mode currently doesn't use blending weight

You may need to apply rotation and scale before baking.

The chain icon is supposed to convert a layer into a mask for how the previous and next layers mix, but it doesn't work right at the moment

'Add color pass' is not functional yet, it will eventually add a solid color layer/