Adding Emission to Custom Texture- Game Dev Series 153
Objective: creating emission effect to texture by using Photoshop.
Emission is a texture effect of 3D model, which would present the lumination effect of objects from its texture map. As texture adjusting we did in the last part, we can also create an emission effect on our own by using Photoshop.
Locate, import and adjust
Let’s add the emission effect to the large testtube of our control room.
Same as adjusting color tone, we need to locate the texture map in Editor and open it from file explorer via Photoshop.
And here is the texture map of large testtube model.
Locate the right part
The next part is locating the target part of this texture. As you can see, the best part to present emission effect of large testtube is the glass-like surface around it.
How do we locate that part easily? As this large testtube, the glass part is the largest and with transparency effect, which would be easy to find out in Photoshop.
Now would be simple, we can just colorize these 2 parts to whole white, and we can import it to Unity as emission texture.
White it out
First we need to select the transparent part. However, Photoshop would not allow you to select transparent part directly, we need to select the other part instead.
Use Quick Selection tool and select the whole area.
Photoshop would automatically avoid the transparent part.
Then press Ctrl+ Shift + I to inverse selected part, or you can find it from the drop down menu from Select> Inverse.
Now the selected part would become the transparent part.
With these selected, lets create a new layer and use Paint Bucket tool to paint these area white.
Since we do not want to change any lumination effect on large testtube besides glass material, we need to black the rest part out.
Create another layer and set it under the white part layer. Then inverse the selected part again and paint it black with bucket tool.
This would be the result you got.
Let’s export this PNG and use it in Unity.
Enable Emission
Locate the texture window of testtube.
There is an Emission part under Surface Inputs.
Enable it and select the PNG we just exported from Photoshop.
You should see the glass part of testtube become white, which is exactly what did in Photoshop.
Now we can adjust the color of illumination effect freely in Inspector.