Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Starman01 on January 06, 2005, 03:26:45 pm
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Hey there,
while working on my current or new models within the last few months, I realized (slowly) that my modelling-skills are now being limited again by my texturing skills (and the HTL-FSO), because I can only texture with tilling-method.
So I have to face the reality and must learn how UV-Mapping works at all. Of course no one here can give me a "just do this"-explanation, but I need a point where I can start.
My Goal is to create combined map-files for rather complex models, but how should I begin, I have not really a clue how I should set the UV-Space in Truespace, when I have a complex texture-file (I'm already working with easy combined maps, i.e. a file where the upper part is the hanger-top, and the lower part is the runway, that's working fine).
I'm pretty sure, that no one draws the map-file first and then add it in truespace using the trail-and error-method (that would take ages IMO, and would cost me the rare rest of my hair).
I would appreciate any advice, and especially links to tutorials etc.
What I have currently available in Software is : TS 5.1 and Photoshop 5.2 (because I like it more than PS 7), do I need anything else ?
This may sound stupid, but again, I need only a good starting point and maybe some links, the rest I will somehow figure out myself :)
Thanks in advance.
Starman©
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I forget, is it 5 or 6 (of TS) with the UV editer built in? I thik it's 6. But if 5 doesn't have it, you'll need a program that can do UVing, like Lithunwrap...
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EDIT: Damn!
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I don't know about any specific UV Editor, I texture all my models with TS5 with normal selecting faces and rotating the UVmap to make it fit.
As for the tiling it can be easily done with combining all tiles into one, you'll see it when I send you the revised Caernavon and Jutland.
Oh and if I were you I'd avoid Lithiumunwrap, it's the worst piece of feces I've encountered for some time.
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I'm already using some of your maps for reference, and the capship-maps are somehow logic to me, at least most of them(that way I'm doing our old hangar-texture). But your fightermaps seems to be awfully complicated to me, and truespace will certainly not be your friend in this, maybe I will annoy you a few times in the future.
But escpecially with our more complex hangars, I need special UV-Mappings to fight the textures with the hangar-boxes.
BTW, I have also TS 6.5 at hand, is this better ? I had some strange problems with crashing and corrupt object-files with it, so I'm currently using TS 5 again (seems like objects from 6.5 cannot be downgraded to TS5 either).
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Originally posted by Lynx
I don't know about any specific UV Editor, I texture all my models with TS5 with normal selecting faces and rotating the UVmap to make it fit.
That´s how i do it too, because i don´t know better!
:p
If only someone would tell me how to then turn the resulting textures to a 1024x1024 map...
:doubt:
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Look at this thread (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,27446.0.html)
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Originally posted by Swamp_Thing
That´s how i do it too, because i don´t know better!
:p
If only someone would tell me how to then turn the resulting textures to a 1024x1024 map...
:doubt:
Heheee, it's so frigin easy. I take renders from top, aft, front and sideview and then cut whole parts like a wing out of that render and put them all toghether in one map. THEN I'll start UV-mapping it.;7
It's very easy that way, it usually takes me twenty minutes or so to mapl a fighter like that, and to further make it easy I'll map just one side, cut the model ahalf, mirror it and glue it together, et vòila, a fully UVmapped model(select a few faces in the middle of the ship you'll have to fix manually but that's it).
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Originally posted by Lynx
Oh and if I were you I'd avoid Lithiumunwrap, it's the worst piece of feces I've encountered for some time.
Burn the heretic ! BURN HIM ! ;)
Lith is your friend (http://underworld.fortunecity.com/pacman/106/fs2mods/shipcreationguide/uvmappingyourmodelusinglu.html)
If IP's tutorial seems too complicated to you, just make a simple model and play around with it in Lith and you'll see how it works very quickly.
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LithUnWrap is a great tool. :nod:
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just think that uvmapping is like peeling a potato and then stretching the pieces of skin over one or more planes:)
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Thanks for this nice mind-picture (potato-peeling), but I'm well informed what UV-Mapping is, I just don't know 100% how to to do that :D
Actually it works pretty well the way Lynx's doing it, even if it is the trail-and-error method about how to set the correct UV-Coordinates.
To be honest, my biggest problem is as follows : (those shots are only for explanation, the real stuff looks 100 times better ;) )
1) This here is my theoreticall mapfile. The lower part is the hangar-wall
(http://www.starman.ag5.de/pics/uv-help1.jpg)
2) This is the hangar, you see that the hangar-wall thing is repeating 5 times, actually something you would normally use a tiling-texture.
(http://www.starman.ag5.de/pics/uv-help2.jpg)
Using some map-part, which can be drawn on a single face is pretty easy, but how can I do it when I have some sort of repeating texture like the hangar-wall below ? Can the UV-Space for the hangar-face (only 1 face) copied or multiplied, or must I have the face divided into several ones ? The button for the UV-Space in Truespace does not have any setup-features.
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GAH, my eyes! Those textures deserve to die.
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This wasn't very helpful. :doubt:
I told you, this is only for explaining my problem, I have no intention showing off our cool hangarmaps to the public at this point of development :p
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Originally posted by Lightspeed
LithUnWrap is a great tool. :nod:
Yeah, it's great for me to poop on.:p
If you are mapping anything more complex than a cube you have to fix enough faces afterwards that it'd been faster if you had just done it in TS. I tried to like it, but it's just horrible.
Only women and wusses use Lith, real men texture in TS!
And Starman, I'll show you how to make a good hangarmap as soon as whoever creeps around at our server leaves.
Oh, and Lightspeed, those are just placeholder maps since fainthearted people would be threatened by the aweinspiring highres beauty of our real hangar maps.
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Hey Starman here's how to pack all hangar maps into one file(size reduced not to reveal too much of it):
(http://www.scifi-3d.de/wcsaga/Lynx's stuff/fbayterran.jpg)
You'll recognize most of the parts, but there's also textures for the fighter elevator ceiling, roof and(not yet) floors in it and that texture that looks like hangarwall but a bit different is for parts where the hangar wall isn't at full height for whatever reason.
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Originally posted by Starman01
Using some map-part, which can be drawn on a single face is pretty easy, but how can I do it when I have some sort of repeating texture like the hangar-wall below ? Can the UV-Space for the hangar-face (only 1 face) copied or multiplied, or must I have the face divided into several ones ? The button for the UV-Space in Truespace does not have any setup-features. [/B]
Thanks, I already learned that after checking out your way of doing things (you would be suprised what I already have ;) ) but this quote above is actually my last big problem. How do you create these, for example for the hangar-floor and the hangartop ? Do you draw several faces and UV-Map each seperatly or can this UV-Button in TS can create some sort of multiplication (similar to tilling) ?
BTW, could you mail me the new floor and top-maps of the new jutland-hangar ? Creating a good floor-map is my biggest problems, since it needs much photoshoping
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(http://www.scifi-3d.de/wcsaga/Lynx's stuff/hangarX.jpg)
First you'll have to select that part of the texture you want to have(in this case the runway, but since everythings on the same texture you can choose anything else from it), then select the face/group you want to texture with it, apply a cuvic or planar UV map an set the repeats(=how often the same part of the texture is repeated over the selected face)
(http://www.scifi-3d.de/wcsaga/Lynx's stuff/UV.jpg)
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Hm, this is also clear to me, but how should I make a repeat of a texture-part, if there is something different in the detail-map besides it. The way you show here the example-texture is pretty simply, because you packed everything vertically, but when I have different part alligned together horizontal, I can't do it that way.
It is obviously hard to explain. I will open a thread in the internal, there I can show you what I'm working on, and we can also communicate in german, should make things easier in this case :)
On the other hand my question is also answered by myself, since
I used polygon-draw to create aditional faces which I can now UV-map seperatly, and by the polycount of our models a few additional faces wont hurt anyone :)
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bah, if you aren't able to use lithunwrap properly, then blame yourself, and not the program;)
if you are going to map anything more complex than a cube without an unwrapper you are going to make a weird job or you are going to waste your time.
And I tryed both ways already.
Using an uveditor (lith or any other) just mean to have full controll over the uvs AND the textures, without trials and errors.
Bwt I guess that anybody is free to choose the way he's more confident with.
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Lynx is nuts, lith owns. TS's exsisting UV editing capabilitys are very limited in what you can do Lith has almost all tools you could want. just make sure you get the latest (free) version.
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http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/blackwater/lithunwrap_setup.zip
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Originally posted by KARMA
if you are going to map anything more complex than a cube without an unwrapper you are going to make a weird job or you are going to waste your time.
Hehe, check out the WCS forum, every ship textured by me is purely UV-mapped in TS, it's neither impossible nor hard.:cool:
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I know for a fact that it isn't imposable, but it is far harder than just useing Lith.
I know I used to do all my UV mapping in TS before lith was known about.
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yup, I unwrapped in TS too, so I know what I'm talking about.
It surely isn't impossible, it's just time wasting and less accurate.
I unwrapped in TS by scaling and moving the uvspaces, using both the calculator and trials and errors method, and I also found anotbher technique, which we can call of the inverse repetition (you use repetition factors <1 to move the relative position of the texture) which is faster but less accurate.
Then I started using lith and I called me stupid for having wasted so much of my time before.
Whenever you want to use only a portion of a texture, mapping without an uveditor is as fun as hitting a wall with the head.
Not that Lith hasn't flaws.
For example, the memory usage when you have too materials or too big textures, expecially on low performance systems, like mine.
The conversions between formats (expecially 3ds and obj) aren't the best possible.
The uvmaps are always represented as squares.
You can uvmap only along the axis, so it can cause distorsions when you have diagonal faces, and you can't deform the uvspaces as you can do in TS (for example, if you want to uvmap cutted cones).
But those are minor flaws compared to the amount of time saved and the precision gained in editing the uvmaps by using lithunwrap
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when i used ts4 i used a program called unwrapper to monitor mapping progress, however the tools had their limits, you cant edit after you uv map something, and working with large numbers of polies at once is frustrating at best. another usefull tool was uvtweak, which allowed me to map fill up the unwraper square and then translate the whole map a texture length to give me more space. then 4 of them could be merged into a single texture.
now im using ts6 so uv mapping is alot easyer thanks to the ade of the uv editor. to make the uv editor a little easyer to use i usually give individual groups of polygons which i will map together different materials. this prevents the uv editor from getting overcluttered. use space in the uv editor liberally at first, overlapping several texture widhs out of the box to aleviate clutter. once all groups are mapped out, apply a new material to the whole ship. this will merge all the uv space into one material, so care must be taken to ensure that the groups will not overlap (if they do i hope you have alot of pain killers handy). then you can stretch and shrink and whatever to get everything to fit in one square. you can also group subobjects together and edit all uv maps on all subobjects simultaniously. this is goof if you dont want to use another texture for your turret. the ultimate goal is to map everything on a ship into a single texture. so have fun :D
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here's a little trick I've been useing lately, use a low resolution random noise texture while UV mapping, try to make all the pixels the same size on the object. after you have broken the uv space into seperate sections, then all you have to do is try to fit everything into a roughly square shape (and if you can't then get it into a 1:2 rectangle)
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I think I will give Lithunwrap a try at my next vacation end of januar. Currently I'm mapping a complex hangar-structure with Lynx's method. It is definitly a lot of work all this try and error, on the other hand the tutorial for Lithunwrap looks very complicated to me, guess I will need much time (and mood) for this :)
About my repeating texture problem, guess I stay by the method braking of the hangarwall into several segments and give everything the same UV-Map, the rest is some photoshoping.
Now I wish I could only create better textures on my own ;)
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another useful trick for the lith users is to paint different group of faces with different solid colours in TS.
When you open the model in lithunwrap, you'll have all those group of polys already assigned to a different material each, making your life incredibly easyer, since another flaw of lith is the selection of the polys on complex models.
Once you have prepared the uvmaps of the different group of polys on the different materials, you can merge all those uvmaps into the definitive material(s) for the final work.
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hmm.... that's a good idea...
just try Lith for a few hours, if you've already got a partaly UV mapped model that's even better. this is the basick work ruteen for lith, select faces->give them a projection (tools->UVmapping->(usualy)decal)->scale->move a lot of times you'll take advantage of the colapse functions to seal seams or to align verts
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i find truespace's tools very usefull so i perfer that over lith. i used to use a univorm uv scale on everything but you can give more space to higher detail areas. and less to places you really arent gonna be looking at alot. trhuster ports on fighters for example dont need to be all that high detail cause you can never see it through the thruster flames anyway. 1024^2 and bigger maps kinda help though.
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Oooookay, I think I'm getting a hang of this now. I'm still working with the truespace-method, and as long as I keep my detail-map simply and don't need to tile too much, it works pretty good :)
But now I need another technical advice, so I can understand the background better. This here is our current Confed-Turret-Model (I know, it is low poly, before the release comes, I will make a better one at least for LOD0). Before I started this topic, I used three textures for this thing: awactile1, awactile2 and xbeam.pcx.
(http://www.starman.ag5.de/pics/turret5.jpg)
Now I created the UV-texture for it, and use only one texture for the whole turret.
(http://www.starman.ag5.de/pics/turretdetail.jpg)
I know HT&L has a limit of 16 texture per subobject. So actually it wouldn't hurt, if the turret-submodels will have additional textures. Now my question is as simple as that :
The new detail-texture is always bigger than one of the smaller textures. What is better for the performance ?
a) Using this bigger detail-texture on all LOD's (of course the one from LOD1 is lower resolution) and give the entired model overall less textures
b) Using three maps at LOD0, and only a small one (the dark "awactile2") at LOD1 ?
I hope you understand what I mean. :)
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htl seems to work better when fewer textures are used. but it does allow you to use higher res textures without much of a noticable performance drop. so something that once took a bunch of 256 textures can use a single 1024^2 texture instead. if you want to take advantage of dds textures your textures need to be square though.