FP Any tips for using Blender to render FP objects correctly to bake textures for lighting, etc?

[madmrmax]

I love using Blender to get the 3D view of the table to correctly adjust things like ramps, etc (see below). But I'd love to take things to the next level and work on

1. Correctly representing FP light bulbs in Blender
2. Correctly representing transparent as well as translucent materials (e.g. solid metal vs. solid plastic vs. clear plastic allows different light through)
3. Understand how to bake lighting into textures

#1 - Correctly representing FP light bulbs
So starting with the first question, how do I actually take a FP bulb and figure out what sort of Blender light source I put there? I can create a Blender light source and parent it to the FP bulb geometry and the location. But what qualities of the Blender light work well for FP? And then how to actually get it to generate anything (Render Image still doesn't show anything from the light source)


#2 - Correctly representing transparent as well as translucent materials (e.g. solid metal vs. solid plastic vs. clear plastic allows different light through)
Ok - so FP makes it easy to say "something has crystal rendering" as well as a nice transparency slider. In addition, FP has the "sphere mapping" which helps in FP. In Blender none of these seem to translate well
My plastics either have the material of "christal" with a "Glass BSDF" surface rendering. What is the best way to understand how to adjust either Nodes or use the best render. Has anyone who has done Blender renders of their FP table figured out some examples of what works best? This applies to any FP surface including bulb models.

Ideally, I can get make translucent plastic look correct. Almost all surfaces which have some transparency have this reflective look (in material view) or worse in Render view.
--material view--
notice the "chrome" look of things like the metal wire ramp, the plastic lane return, the posts, etc.

--Render view--


#3 - Understand how to bake lighting into textures
Ok so once I can figure out #1 and #2 I think the next step is to figure out how to actually get the lighting baked into plastics. I understand some high level aspects like creating a new material slot and changing the source of it. I understand some of this from high level walk through videos, but wondering how it works when working with a full table. Any tips and tricks?


--final shot of the whole table--
I

 

[TerryRed]

1) I just adjust the blender lights for each of the GI bulbs until they look the way I want. I don't have a specific setting / value. Some people don't even use "lights", but instead they make the model for the light "emissive" (this is what I did for MOTU CE's neon lights).

One of my GI lights...




2) I don't even bother with this in Blender. The reason being, that pre-baked transparent textures / models only look "correct" from one camera pov. Once your camera view changes or you play in VR (both which FP does a lot), then any pre-baked transparent materials no longer look correct. VPX tables using the blender toolkit to create prebaked transparent / reflective textures may look nice in 2D static views, but when you see them in VR, you can see quickly how all the pre-baked lighting and reflections no longer look correct.

For MOTU CE, I just fake the look of lights coming through the plastics using something like GIMP. Then I made transparent models of the plastics and used sphere maps for the edges and top surfaces (both being separate FP ramp models).

You can see how I did both in my MOTU CE wip post.

3) There is no simple explanation for this. You can only watch videos on how to do it, and translate that to what you want to use it for with FP. Normally, you would have your entire table ready and all GI lights lit, etc in Blender. Then you would select the item / model you want to pre-bake. Then goto the UV Editor tab. Then goto the part of Blender that you need to setup your renderer to CYCLES. In that same section there is the Bake button. Click that, and when done, your texture is now replaced with the baked one. Then you need to manually save that texture so it can be used on FP. Then import it to FP and make whatever adjustments / code changes that are needed for your setup.

That is assuming that your model is using a simple material and texture. It can get much more complicated if using models with tiled textures, and you need to add a new UV map, or need to remesh a high poly model, etc.


Blender... no mater what you are trying to do with it, takes a long time to get to know. I recommend importing your FP stuff into Blender (using the older version needed), save the table as a Blend file, then use a newer version of Blender like 4.1 to do all your work.

 

[madmrmax]

Thanks TerryRed for the response!

I think one issue I was using the EEVEE rendering engine and I could never get things to look "ok". I noticed now about using Cycles to actually get the "rendered" experience. Now I can see something really happening with my lighting, etc.

Do you get ok rendering using EEVEE while you are working/editing the table and then only switch to Cycles for seeing how lights look, etc? Any tips on some EEVEE settings to get something to look ok vs. always having to be in Cycles mode?

Some people don't even use "lights", but instead they make the model for the light "emissive" (this is what I did for MOTU CE's neon lights).

Thanks for mentioning this! I did a search and tried out this as a concept. Definitely a great way to get an easy effect!

For MOTU CE, I just fake the look of lights coming through the plastics using something like GIMP. Then I made transparent models of the plastics and used sphere maps for the edges and top surfaces (both being separate FP ramp models).

Makes sense -- just using GIMP's effects (e.g. like lighten\brighten area or even add a layer which does the blend mode you want, etc)

I recommend importing your FP stuff into Blender (using the older version needed), save the table as a Blend file, then use a newer version of Blender like 4.1 to do all your work.

Yup! I only stayed as long as needed in the legacy Blender enough to get a good FPT -> .Blend file created. I've been using Bforartist as a Blender offshoot just cause a few UX things made more sense (well that fork relies more on UX buttons and such vs. keybindings). I'm missing out on some Blender key mappings which has caused me some troubles as all the Blender videos usually make use of keystrokes.

I appreciate all your answers!
-mark

 

[TerryRed]

I only use CYCLES for both live preview and baked rendering, and I have it set to use Optix.





I do most of the work with the view port set to simple solid rendering. Then when I'm at the point of having all lighting setup and ready and want to see how things look, then I switch the viewport to rendered. I have a RTX 4070 Ti Super, so I get very fast (almost instant) realtime results.

 

[madmrmax]

I have a RTX 4070 Ti Super, so I get very fast (almost instant) realtime results.

Yeah that definitely helps!

thanks again,
-mark