I am basically done with this tile. I want to paint in some shadows here and there though.
As far as I know I want to use the shading enhancer brush. The question is, do I need to merge all of the layers and then bake them before doing that?
Thanks
I ended up merging them all together and then baking the layer. I don’t think it was strictly necessary, but every time I tried to paint a shadow best render shut off and it was impossible to tell what was going on. IIRC in Meats’ (first video) he explains that the “second row” of tools works best with the layer baked. I still don’t claim to understand why though.
Anyway here’s a few highlights and shadows painted on this rather gross piece. Texture on the hunk o’ flesh from lemog3d (thanks Frenchy!).
edit I just flipped back and forth between the two versions in irfanview. The shading and highlighting really make it pop.
Many of the correction brushes work by adjusting the unshaded colors, which then gets filtered through the 3D rendering engine to give the shaded colors that you see. As a result, these brushes give the best results when the layer has been baked because the colors you see are then the colors that are going to be adjusted. In short, the rendering engine is coming into play before you use the brush, rather than after.