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I am modeling an ottoman, and need help interpreting the instructions, which say, "Amount of materials should be same as amount of texture sets."

Some info on the model: My ottoman is one mesh, with a high-poly version baked onto a normal map. The materials are a gray mottled leather with dark wood feet. I have been provided only this texture...

enter image description here

1st question: So, a "material" is the full node set-up, and a "texture" is any of the maps or images used to plug in to that material's nodes (or just set on the UV mapping). Is that correct? But, then, what is a "texture set"? I would think they mean the group of generated images or textural maps for each of the 9 materials they list here:

  • Main textures:
    • BaseColor (sRGB)
    • AO (Linear)
    • Roughness (Linear)
    • Metalness (Linear)
    • Normal (RGB)
    • Opacity (Linear)
    • Emissive (sRGB)
  • Additional textures: Glossiness, Specular

Here are the other relevant instructions:

  • Single UV set per model, multiple textures sets if extra resolutions is needed
  • Only square textures, 4096x4096 resolution
  • Normal maps baked from hi-poly models
  • Metalness & Specular workflow maps needed

...

What I would normally think to do in making a model like this is to apply a material to each part (one for the leather, one for the feet), then use a multi-noded setup for each one, including procedural texture for the basecolor, the provided texture image for bump and light-related maps (the baking of which I will be figuring out on the fly), the baked normal map I have from the high-poly mesh, plus certain settings on the Diffuse Shader.

It seems to me that this does not meet the following requirements:

Metalness & Specular workflow maps needed (This confuses me anyway, as I've never really heard of using every single map, and I thought Metalness & Specular were generally used one or the other. Also, can you even bake a procedural color into a image map?)

Amount of materials should be same as amount of texture sets (It seems like I will have 2 materials and something like 9 textures, so what really differentiates a texture set from a material in this context?)

Can someone set me straight, and maybe help me figure out the workflow here?

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  • $\begingroup$ Material and texture is not well defined in CG. They should been described more to let people know what exactly is that thing. But in common, texture just mean a pre-build data for rendering engine to retrieve data. It doesn't need to be an image, but most of the time it can be display as 2D image. And for material.... you need to provide more information about that word $\endgroup$
    – HikariTW
    Dec 8, 2019 at 0:36
  • $\begingroup$ Let's see, the reference is "Amount of materials should be same as amount of texture sets." I'm looking to see if there's any world in which that makes sense. From what I understand, a "material" should refer to the material applied to the object in the Materials Properties Panel, whereas a "texture" should refer to an image, like a Diffuse Map, Normal Map, Bump Map, AO Map, etc. Does this clarify? I know my question was long, but I hope I've included all relevant info. $\endgroup$
    – Doctacus
    Dec 8, 2019 at 1:38

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A "texture set" is the full set of textures for a material, as you've listed above. For example, diffuse, specular, roughness, metalness, etc. = 1 texture set. If you download a PBR material from a site like CC0 Textures, what you get is 1 texture "set."

I'm interpreting this requirement to mean that they want separate materials with separate texture sets. In other words, don't put the leather and wood on the same maps. You could of course put the all of them into one texture set, with just different parts of a map defining different material parameters but it sounds like they want it separated by material.

So the "leather" material would have its own diffuse, spec, etc., and the "wood" material has its own textures as well. Sounds like this was your plan anyway.

Secondly, you are correct that Specular and Metalness are usually two different workflows. I think your client wants the flexibility to be able to use either one. Maybe they aren't sure which renderer they will use in the end.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thank you so much for this answer! I'm sure you're correct, and I've been working with all this in mind, but had to start over because of some issues with my mesh. I have one further point of confusion on this thing, two (seemingly competing?) requirements. One is where it says, "Amount of materials should be same as amount of texture sets." The other says, "Single UV set per model, multiple textures sets if extra resolutions is needed." There should be 2 materials/texture sets, but doesn't the UV unwrap both materials together into one map-texture? Am I confused on how this works? $\endgroup$
    – Doctacus
    Dec 18, 2019 at 0:15
  • $\begingroup$ if you like my answer then please "accept" it as the correct one. $\endgroup$
    – Dale Cieslak
    Dec 18, 2019 at 7:08
  • $\begingroup$ to answer your question about the UV set, the UVs are simply a way to tell Blender how to map the coordinates of your model onto a texture space. You can use the same UV set for multiple materials, but only paint the texture in the section of the UV set that you need for each texture. I hope this makes sense. You can also use different resolution textures for the same UV set, because the UV set is simply telling how to map the geometry to the texture. $\endgroup$
    – Dale Cieslak
    Dec 18, 2019 at 7:11
  • $\begingroup$ I see, thank you. So then, if I may expand... The BaseColor/Diffuse, for example, it seems will be easy enough. But for the normal map, for example, how would this work? I am sculpting details onto a high-poly version of the low-poly mesh, and then baking the normal map from that object. So would I actually hide the legs on both objects and bake the normal map from the leather part only, and then unhide legs, hide leather, bake a new one for the legs? Would that work? $\endgroup$
    – Doctacus
    Dec 18, 2019 at 22:45
  • $\begingroup$ yes, I think that should work. $\endgroup$
    – Dale Cieslak
    Dec 19, 2019 at 4:04

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