There are several ways to create a channel-packed texture but I will touch on three packages, Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, and Substance Painter. Going forward, I will refer to this channel-packed texture as the ORM texture for Occlusion, Roughness, and Metallic. The textures need to be packed into the channels of your texture as follows: The Ambient Occlusion, Roughness, and Metallic textures are saved in a single channel-packed texture to reduce the number of texture loads. The Base Color, Normal, and Emission textures are saved as individual files, preferably a PNG as the format is lossless. The format does expect the textures in a specific format, however. The glTF format supports the following textures for the Metallic-Roughness PBR model: Keeping control over the export gives you more power to create assets that look exactly the way you want them to. Command line tools will need to make guesses at times if the asset doesn’t conform to expected guidelines and can result in assets that don’t render as intended. The other reason, which is the more important consideration, is to ensure that the mesh and textures I author are translated into the format correctly. If I am already using an authoring tool, having a path to glTF right from the tool without needing to run it through a converter will speed my process. There are two main reasons for this and the first one is speed. In this post I am touching on authoring tools such as 3ds Max, Blender, and Substance Painter even though there are several command line conversion tools available for glTF. If your model was not created in one of these packages (or you are using Substance Painter to export) you will need to save your model into an exchange format that can be imported into these packages such as COLLADA. The tools that can export a model and textures into the glTF format at this point are 3ds Max, Blender, and Substance Painter with more exporters coming soon. Otherwise, you can create your model in any package you prefer.
![clo3d file export clo3d file export](https://zoomagate.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/8/0/138079231/278134550_orig.jpg)
Mesh Considerationsīecause glTF is designed for run-time delivery, meshes should be created with real-time rendering guidelines in mind. If you are new to authoring textures for PBR materials, there is a comprehensive guide on the subject available from Allegorithmic that is a great place to start. With that in mind, my examples will use Metallic-Roughness materials to ensure the most flexible assets possible. GlTF will support Specular-Glossiness materials.
#Clo3d file export software
I will touch on both free and commercial software packages to ensure everyone has a path into glTF, but first let's outline a few important concepts. To help achieve that, I am going to walk through several paths for authoring content in the glTF format as well as outline specific settings to maximize your success. To be the most efficient and avoid frustration, it helps to understand the format's requirements.
![clo3d file export clo3d file export](https://www.vntana.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/TexturePhotoshop.png)
Authoring content for a new file format can be exciting, liberating, and at the same time scary.