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How to Assign a Different Texture to Each Side of a Single Sided Mesh #TopTip





This weeks #TopTip comes from Lead Texture Artist Aurelie Badin - for Texture Artists looking to assign a different texture to each side of a single sided mesh!

The best example of an instance of this would be a paper sheet, it’s a single sided mesh but you need to have two different textures on it, because you don’t want to have one texture on one side and the same reversed on the other side.

So, here is your shader:

And here is your paper sheet:

And yes, both sides have the same texture because they both have the same uvs and faces.

So, how to assign another map to the other side?

One option is to shake your fists at the modellers and ask them to remodel it with two sides. But we've got a slightly more agreeable option to keep everyone happy using the steps below.

What’s the difference between those two sides?

The normals.

One side has the normal in the right direction, and the other has its normals reversed.

So, let’s take advantage of that to assign another texture to the reversed normal!

To do that, we’ll use a condition node and a sampler info.

The sampler info has the ability to recognise flipped normal and the condition has two color entries that can be used… well, on certain conditions.

Plug all your nodes as follows:

And render your paper:

One texture for each side!


Anahita Tabarsi

Anahita is Brown Bag Films' Marketing Director, Digital & Social and drinks more than five coffees a day...

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