Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Akalabeth Angel on March 13, 2008, 10:37:29 pm
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Some models I think sorta texture only half the model, and the texture is applied to the other side as well. How does a person go about doing this? I'm still having problems doing the UV Mapping . . . I think maybe I have to like extract the faces to move them around in the UV Texture editor (maya)??? I dunno, I did that in class when we did a dice anyway. Though the ship I was working on is a heck of a lot more complicated than a dice.
Basically just trying to get the ship into the one quadrant over the 1024x1024 texture. But not working so well thus far. I'm going to check the Maya help files, etcetera as well . . . after I run to 7-11. I'm thinking for the mirroring thing, a person like . . .somehow makes the two sets of faces overlay onto the same piece of texture or something like that?
Also I'm guessing I'm going to have problems trying to do the texture when I don't know where the ship starts and stops. Hopefully there's a way to transfer the ship outline or polygon faces onto the texture.
(http://members.shaw.ca/pbcbrown/pics/uvmap.jpg)
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Usually you cut the mesh in half, mirror it and then unwrap it. Once it's all unwraped and the uv layout done then finalize the mirror function. If that is not possible, only do the mirroring on the mesh as the final stage.
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Usually you cut the mesh in half, mirror it and then unwrap it. Once it's all unwraped and the uv layout done then finalize the mirror function. If that is not possible, only do the mirroring on the mesh as the final stage.
Okay . . . I wonder if there's a way to mirror in Maya different than the way I did it. My teacher just got us to create a locator, parent the ship to the locator. Duplicate said locator then scale it -1 in the appropriate direction. And then I merged the meshes and vertices. . . . ah, more stuff to check out.
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First thing to do would be chop the ship in half. You should only UV one half of a symmetric model. I assume maya will have some kind of mirror modeller feature that will show the full model but only let you edit the half that actually exists - if so, that's the best thing to use. :)
The process of UV mapping a complex shape like this will typically not involve the cubic projection type you have in that screenie. It's more a matter of selecting segments of the model and applying a UV projection to just that section, and then moving it into place on the texture area. Another way to think of it is just re-rranging the faces on top of the texture to tell them which bits of the texture they should use. This means they can overlap, but I would recommend you try to avoid that if at all possible, as if you eventually come to start baking ambient occlusion to the texture, overlapping bits cause problems. This isn't a set rule or anything though so you don't need to worry if you do do overlaps. :)
Here's the new Aten as an example of what I mean by segmenting bits for individual UV projections: http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/BlenderTutorialStuff/UVmapping1.jpg
Notice the top shell thing has been selected in the 3d window and a top-down projection has been applied to it which you can see in the right window. In blender this involved facing the camera to where I wanted to create the UV projection from, but you should also have options such as some kind of unwrap. Unwrapping is typically most important in objects with curved or complex surfaces like your fighter here, and reduces or prevents some faces being assigned to a ridiculusly tiny area of texture to use. This would create the ugly lines or blurred bits you can see in parts of low-medium quality models. A good example of this in FS is the inside of the Cain's three arms. They take up basically no area of the texture, meaning they have no detail applied to them. Looks horrible.
Anyway - the workflow of UV mapping I use is basically:
1) Divide model into sections of continuous surfaces, only making seams where they're less likely to be visible such as in recessed/dark areas or where one shape on the hull meets another.
2) UV project the sections one by one from a direction that allows neat, roughly fair share of the available area between all the faces in the section.
3) Manually correct any problems on each section such as stretching or unwrapping hiccups etc.
4) Move the whole section off to the sides of the texture and start on the next until they're all done.
5) Like a big jigsaw puzzle, arrange all the pieces onto the available texture area so that they give a fairly uniform distribution of the detail. Ie, if you have a small piece and a big piece of model, they appear small and big respectively on the UV map.
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Thanks Vasudan Admiral, you always seem to have some good posts about modelling I see.
I'll try it out . . . looking at your post, and at the maya help files, and trying to search for some tutorials online. I'm starting to think I should've maybe modelled a cargo container instead :lol:
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You certainly jumped in the deep end with a Vasudan fighter as a first, but it looks great. :yes: Awesome design.
It's also really, really cool to see someone learning to go the whole way with a model and texture rather than just release a naked mesh for someone else to finish who never ever turns up. Keep it up! :D
If you have any problems or questions just ask - I like helping out with this sorta thing, though I won't be able to give very specific help due to the whole different app thing. ;)
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Where were you when i needed to learn to UV map... :wtf:
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It's also really, really cool to see someone learning to go the whole way with a model and texture rather than just release a naked mesh for someone else to finish who never ever turns up. Keep it up! :D
Let someone else finish it? Bah, not letting someone else touch my stuff :D People screw up my stuff enough in my profession, don't need it happening in my hobbies.
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Where were you when i needed to learn to UV map... :wtf:
I don't recall seeing you request for help in that regard anywhere, but I do recall you asking for other people to texture your ships. :p
If you still do need to learn it though, ask away. Seems on-topic enough. :)
Let someone else finish it? Bah, not letting someone else touch my stuff :D People screw up my stuff enough in my profession, don't need it happening in my hobbies.
Heh, I like that attitude, even if it can make teamwork a little tricky sometimes. ;)
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Let someone else finish it? Bah, not letting someone else touch my stuff :D People screw up my stuff enough in my profession, don't need it happening in my hobbies.
Heh, I like that attitude, even if it can make teamwork a little tricky sometimes. ;)
It's only tricky if you're on a team ;)
So yeah, I animate as a profession . . . starting first in Flash. And I finish a scene, I'm happy with it . .. two months later I see it on TV and someone's screwed up the animation big time. Or cut out my scene completely. And yeah that's a little annoying.
But frak, I finally overcame one hurdle to UV mapping. I couldn't figure out how the hell to move stuff in the UV Texture editor . . .and then I finally thought "gee, maybe I need to select-type UV first" *stupid*. I don't know about other programs, but with Maya you can set it to select/move/rotate etcetera certain types of things like Objects, Faces, Vertices, Edges . . and APPARENTLY also UV Maps. Phew . .. maybe I'll start getting somewhere now. Though still not sure if I have to mirror, and UV map. Or UV Map and mirror. Actually I'm guessing it might be the latter . . . so I might try that instead.
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Maya does have the right mirror function (maybe try instance?)
The projected style of uv mapping is old school - BUT it is easier for people to get their head around.
It does limit what you can texture, the way it looks and wastes texture space. I don't remember seeing any character unwrap tutorials that use the projected style, although some of the older ship unwrap tuts show it.
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Maya does have the right mirror function (maybe try instance?)
The projected style of uv mapping is old school - BUT it is easier for people to get their head around.
It does limit what you can texture, the way it looks and wastes texture space. I don't remember seeing any character unwrap tutorials that use the projected style, although some of the older ship unwrap tuts show it.
True, but I get the impression that while you can maybe mirror the ship you can't mirror the UV Map. Or at least I found more than a few posts around the internet with people complaining about that. So I think I'll UV map half the ship, mirror it, merge the vertices and then should be fine. I think I've UV mapped about half my model . . . using the planar type of style. But I might do cylinders for something like the gun barrels. It works pretty good for like large flat objects it seems, but getting into the little overlapping details I find myself separating a few of them into smaller little bits.
But yeah, with anything like guns and engines . . .seems maybe not the best method? I dunno. I'm off to sleep anyway, finish the damn thing tomorrow.
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Where were you when i needed to learn to UV map... :wtf:
I don't recall seeing you request for help in that regard anywhere, but I do recall you asking for other people to texture your ships. :p
If you still do need to learn it though, ask away. Seems on-topic enough. :)
Let someone else finish it? Bah, not letting someone else touch my stuff :D People screw up my stuff enough in my profession, don't need it happening in my hobbies.
Heh, I like that attitude, even if it can make teamwork a little tricky sometimes. ;)
My ships are free to edit, do whatever the hell you want with em. however, i never ASKED anyone to :rolleyes:
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If anyone is willing to texture and POF it, please add an extra missle bank and an extra 2 gun banks (mounted on the new top missle bank) in the POF.
andSo, anyone willing to texture and UV map the beast?
Sounds like asking to me. :p
Anyway - so I take it you don't need UV help now?
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No, actually i do. As for the dec 20th time that was asking, but the dec 12th time was for anyone who wanted to do it, i really didn't care whether they did or not
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Right, so what's your current modelling process involve? Does it begin and end in sketchup or do you have something else already?
If you don't already have one, your two main UVing options are lithunwrap and blender. I would (predictably) recommend blender, as sketchup exports tend to produce a lot of bad geometry that will likely need fixing before a stable conversion can happen. Blender is a good choice here because it can do all of that and more, whereas if you use lithunwrap you'll need to at least go through truespaz before you can get it conversion-ready.
So, choose your destiny!
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How about you download my artemis MK II and check for any unstable geometry... it imports without any... >_> Anyway, i just cant get the whole UV map out of it... you said somthing about cutting it in half and mirroring the UV map?
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I think I figured it out . . . some things could probably be better but I tried to join things together where possible.
Now I have to learn how to make some textures in photoshop . . . bah. My photoshop skills are amateur at best . . . though of course first thing to do is to rip textures from the VPs to see what the fighters look like generally.
Maya has a nice UV snapshot key. Handy.
(http://knossos.firenebula.com/FS2_campaign/Maya/vasfighteruv.jpg)
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Before you rush off to texture it, use a checkered texture to see how the uv map holds up. A 1024 texture with 4 pixel squares.
Look for streaks at the edges of the uv islands - polys mapped edge on, and also relative sizes of the pieces. If you spot areas with large distortions, it's telling you to break up the uv map differently for that area.
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Before you rush off to texture it, use a checkered texture to see how the uv map holds up. A 1024 texture with 4 pixel squares.
Look for streaks at the edges of the uv islands - polys mapped edge on, and also relative sizes of the pieces. If you spot areas with large distortions, it's telling you to break up the uv map differently for that area.
You know I was trying to do some checkboard shader thing that's assigned to UVs automatically in Maya but the thing wasn't working for some reason. And then when I assigned it just as a normal texture/material it was all funky. I've got two UV sets for some reason so gotta delete one of them first. . . . sigh
Awe, piss me off. Whenever I try to assign the checkboard pattern it assigns it under some "default UV set" called map1 as opposed to my organised one which is UVset1. Then I try to delete the map1, it says I can't delete the default set. . . . but I dunno how to get the texture to apply to the new set I did. I have it selected in the texture editor, I do "set current UV set" to it. Doesn't work. Must be some dumb little thing I have to do . . . So annoying.
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Oh wait, I think I figured it out. I copied the UVs from UVset1 to map1. Seems to have done the trick.
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AA: Yeah you definitely seem to be on the right track there, well done. :)
How about you download my artemis MK II and check for any unstable geometry... it imports without any... >_> Anyway, i just cant get the whole UV map out of it... you said somthing about cutting it in half and mirroring the UV map?
The amount and type of unstable geometry changes based on the ship and the export method. It does a lot of very weird things. In this case though for some reason, it's neatly isolated the weirdness into a separate object: :wtf:
(http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/VA--Twisted_Infinities/BlenderTutorialStuff/SketchupWeirdness.jpg)
The....for lack of a better term, export fart...on the left appears to be a separate polygon representing each edge or something - it's very weird, but would definitely cause problems and/or explosions during UVing and conversion. ;)
The other thing is that as you can see on the actual model on the right, every face on the model has been unwelded and is now free floating. This is impossible to fix in Truespace, but a single button press in blender, so I'd even more strongly recommend that avenue if you want to be able to fix it in future.
Finally, there is a UV map applied as shown far right, but it's just gibberish and entirely uselsess. You still need to pick a UVing app avenue though, so you'll need to do that before I can show you the appropriate tutorials.
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Bleh! forgot all about this :ick: Alright, i think i still have blender installed SOMEWHERE....
Since the GUI on blender is FUBAR'd IMO, tell me step by step how to fix the errors, then we can get on to the UV mapping
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Describing the steps to fix won't do much good if you're unable to use Blender in the first place - you'll need at least a basic workings knowlege of it. If you're looking for a push-button approach you're just not going to find it as Blender focuses almost entirely on keyboard shortcuts which are so much faster to work with than buttons I wish more programs would do it that way. ;)
As such, I would recomend you follow some of the plethora of Blender tutorials out there to get the basics of it. There are some excellent regular and video tutorials all over the blender.org website like these ones (http://www.blender.org/education-help/tutorials/#c807) and these ones. (http://www.blender.org/education-help/video-tutorials/getting-started/)
After that, for any specific feature help, there's a giant wiki which describes everything and has a 'noob to pro' tut on it too: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Main_Page
UV mapping particularly can be a tricky concept to grasp, but without it you will never be able to get anything other than texture-tiled monstrosities through truespace, so it's well worth learning. ;)