Creating a Product Mockup: Export Specular Map to image to use as Highlights layer in Photoshop

Question

I am fairly new to Blender and I am using EEVEE to render my scene.

The reason for taking this route:

I do repro design for product labels. Part of our process when working on new pbriefs, is to create visual mockups to present to clients. I work as part of a team and no-one has 3D modeling experience. I need to in the end, create a Photoshop file that I can share with the rest of my team to enable them to create said mockups.

Let's use the following images as example (I did not create them; these are just for ease of reference):

(Image of base model created in blender)

(Image of specular map/highlights created in blender)

(Photoshop Layer Composition)

(Photoshop Image Result)

Just as a note: the bottle images above are from a Photoshop mockup file.

My plan of action:

1. I want to create a studio with infinity curve & lighting setup in Blender. - I am more or less ok with doing that.
2. Add my created product mockup to that environment - I am ok with doing that (all materials/textures will be created in Blender, will not be importing external images of any kind).
3. I want to in Blender using Eevee, render and export the base model image (see image for reference). - I am ok with doing that.
4. I want to export the highlights (specular map render?) of the model as a standalone image as well - This is the part that I unfortunately do not know how to do.
5. Import the two images into Photoshop and create a useable product mockup from there. - I am good with doing that.

The typical layer setup for Photoshop will be from top to bottom as follows:

• Your Highlights layer with blend mode set to Screen
• Your colour tint layer with blend mode set to Linear Burn
• Your base item/render layer with blend mode set to Normal

I was thinking as a novice workaround that in step 4, I can:

1. Apply black as the base colour of the model.
2. Increase the glossiness/ shine of the model.
3. Export that as an image to be my highlights layer in Photoshop

Can give me some advice on how to achieve this?

Answer 1

I'm having the same problem actually, I tried the following solutions :

• Exporting my file as an OpenEXR Multilayer format after rendering, and using EXR-IO addon with Photoshop to open the file (Look for compositing with photoshop) == this solution didn't help me because the final result was not as the render result after I opened the file in photoshop, it was very bright and the colors were a bit off.

• Using compositor, I used a set of nodes (set Alpha, Denoise) to save the highlights and the colors seperately as .png files([check this post][1])

So far, these are my attempts, will update you based on what I figure out! [1]: How to render specular highlights as a separate image with alpha channel?