Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Colonol Dekker on July 31, 2010, 04:40:32 am
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I seriously don't get on with it.
I can handle the easier stuff like low poly fighters but my better models which are still buried on cd backups will probably never see the light of day because I lose all motivation an hour into trying to get at least a section of the map done. I've been modelling since 00 making all sorts of crap for retail. Tile mapped ugly crap in Truespace 2.1 to be honest. But my modelling improved. I got better programs. But UV mapping remains my downfall.
Up until recently my prog of choice (the prog I get least :mad: with I should say) is lithunwrap or lithium unwrapper. I'm trying to get my head around Daz3D's Cararra pro 7. Which I got free from a magazine.
What I normally try is to unwrap to a basic shape and then take it further. . . .
What i'm rather poorly trying to say is, all you Diaspora and FOTG and MediaVP contributors, give me your collective advice and thoughts on this one process.
UV mapping!
Recommended methods, tips and the like.
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UVmapping is a ***** that takes a long long loooooong time to get right, and even then its an utterly terribly boringly time-consuming process that'll make you weep a lot. This is from a modeller with approx 6 years of experience with modelling and approx 2 years of attemps to UVmap anything... (note, attempts. i never managed to unwrap something so its actually useable to draw crap)
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do some paper modeling (the thing were you take the "UV map" with the texture on it, print it and make it into 3d. It helps you to understand the basics!
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I understand the basics. I understand the concept.
I require guidance in not hating it. Crave wisdom in honeing what are in essence meagre skills.
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what ktistai228 said then. get pepakura for that too. it basically allows you to cut up your models for such things :D
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Welcome to the club
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Personally I always find making textures much harder and time consuming than UV mapping. As pecenipicek noted it can be very boring, but for me it's usually something that I sit down with a big mug of coffee, put on some atmospheric music and get it over with.
What I have found is that for tricky parts, it's usually useless to just start, as it leads to nothing. Instead you have to unwrap it first completely in your head (that's the paper model approach the others already explained). That requires some practice and some 3d visualization skill, but once you know how the result should look, implementation is much easier.
Also, it helps a lot if you already have some ideas how the texture should apply to the model (which parts share the same UV space, which parts need their own UV space), otherwise texturing becomes a PITA.
My general approach:
- Divide&Conquer: start with the big parts, then work your way through the smaller details one at a time.
- Select a face (or group of faces for more complex models) and do a "map-planar-to-face" (that's the most important feature for me that's missing in Lith), join the planar mapped parts together manually after wards, preferably joint them in the same place where they are also geometrically connected. This is the step where you scale the parts correctly to each other. Rinse&repeat for the whole model.
- Scale the joined parts to each other and try to fill up the available UV space as efficiently as possible.
But it's hard to give guidance to UV mapping in text... so why don't you post one of your models and we can explain the finer arts on a real example.
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UV'ing is incredibly annoying.
but you gotta do what you gotta do, right?
I have only uv'd one model so far (you've seen it dek and it sucks) so I can't say I'm an expert.
Personally I like doing the uv this way:
grab a chunk of faces that have no visible change of orientation (they face the same direction) then I apply seems on it.
then I uv those faces and see if I get a somewhat plane surface, when I get that I stop with those faces and go looking for other chunk of faces elsewhere.
After the hole model is uv'd I grab all the islands and I start joining/ aligning verts in the uv map selector.
I only know how to use the mapping method, no experience in tiled UV'ing.
STILL... I'm looking forward for more experienced modelers to come around and toss some tips for the crowd.
I'll be keeping my eyes on this thread.
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Ok, heres a collection of various assorted stuff.
What i'm most miffed about is not being able to get my cdcruise exatly how i like it.........
I want it in-game :(
Some of my older fighters are done well considering my innate hate of doing it. :drevil:
Rodo, yeah i started out with that too. IPAndrews old tut got me started but once i hit the £OHMYGOD I CAN MODEL OVER 10k POLYS!"£ thresh-hold i began to get a bit :rolleyes:
EDIT- for your convenience................ NO COBS in the archive. ewither 3ds or obj.
[attachment deleted by ninja]
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Fishguts speaks the troof. Music helps, caffeine helps. Also refer to Galemp's sig.
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I reckon the difficulties you sound like you're facing in lithunwrap are actually purely because of the toolset available and the clunky interface in lithunwrap - not cos of any inability on your part. I used lith for years not knowing any better, and yeah UV mapping was perpetually a HORRIBLE process and got more and more horrible as my shapes got more complex.
Eventually Water pointed out to me that Blender actually had a very good UV mapping suite built in. I took a bit of convincing to give it a solid go (simply cos until that point I had ONLY used blender for mesh construction), but once I did I completely abandoned Lith. Blender's tools are both easier to use than Liths AND far more flexible. UV mapping is now very easy, but can still be a bit time consuming depending on just how pedantic I want to be (which is usually... quite :\ ).
The process consists of:
1) Selecting the face or faces to UV using whatever selection tools you like (as in tools like: select all linked faces, select all linked co-planar faces with an angle tolerance, select all similar to current selection (based on size, direction etc) - and a few other neat tools like increment selection which adds all faces touching the currently selected faces to the selection)
2a) Pressing unwrap to auto-unwrap it's UVs. You might need to select some key edges and mark them as seams to get it to unwrap correctly.
OR
2b) Orientating the camera so it's facing the selected faces straight on (there's a tool to quickly and precisely do that too), project the selected faces from the current view onto the UV plane.
3) Scale and arrange the UV 'islands' to maximise texture space usage. (there are tools to do this automatically too!)
Not saying you SHOULD switch to blender (though....you still should! :p ) but the point is that other apps do exist that have much better toolsets than lith and ESPECIALLY TS. (I don't think I'd even count TS as having a UV toolset. It more has a lone rusty bent screwdriver made of cheese, and pretends it's a full on CNC machining workshop.)
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in truespace i used different materials for different mapping areas, this made them easy to select. in max i used smooth groups for the same purpose. i also dont bother to scale the projected sections until all the projections are complete. i dont try to fill the square with sections as i map them. this allows me to achieve better proportions and to use as much of the map space as possible. also you dont have the annoying problem of running out of uv space before you run out of polygons. i also do a touchup pass where i apply a checker pattern and adjust individual verts until all the squares look square, it also allows you to gauge proportions. once im happy with everything il cram it all into the square.
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3) Scale and arrange the UV 'islands' to maximise texture space usage. (there are tools to do this automatically too!)
can you provide me the shortcut to this automatic arrange tool please, pretty please??
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I reckon the difficulties you sound like you're facing in lithunwrap are actually purely because of the toolset available and the clunky interface in lithunwrap - not cos of any inability on your part. I used lith for years not knowing any better, and yeah UV mapping was perpetually a HORRIBLE process and got more and more horrible as my shapes got more complex.
Good to know that it's not just me then :yes:
Not saying you SHOULD switch to blender (though....you still should! :p ) but the point is that other apps do exist that have much better toolsets than lith and ESPECIALLY TS. (I don't think I'd even count TS as having a UV toolset. It more has a lone rusty bent screwdriver made of cheese, and pretends it's a full on CNC machining workshop.)
I agree completely, when 5.1 came out for free and i got "GASP" Cube mapping i nearly fainted.
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Go check out some tuts in the section here at the board.
Might look into Bodypaint 3D, they have a different system for dealing with models
for more visual people.
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Go check out some tuts in the section here at the board.
Might look into Bodypaint 3D, they have a different system for dealing with models
for more visual people.
i'm using it. it comes with Cinema4D nowadays.
not a fun experience.
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Ok, fess up.
Who's got my fresh steaming dump, but hasn't passed judement on the mapping?
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I had a look at the cdcruis... but the geometry is a mess (maybe the export to 3ds is to blame) and the mapping is only halfway done I presume.
Any of the other models you want us to have a closer look at?
EDIT: Ok, so the the gbomb seems to have the cleanest geometry and you did a simple box-mapping on that one. So if you don't mind I'm gonna have a crack at it, give it a proper UV layout, and then report back here with the results.
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UVmapping is one of the easier things to do (compared with coming up with ideas LOL)
Divide and conquer is my main trick... also even though you can't use symmetry for your final model (due to normal map issues) you can use it to do both sides of the model at once then simply move on side away from the other, flip and connect the two and vola.
Also does lithunwrap do unwrapping based on angle? For instance in Max by default it will connect all polygons provided they're within 45 degree angle of each other.
Rounded corners are my worst problem
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can you provide me the shortcut to this automatic arrange tool please, pretty please??
UV editor pane -> UVs -> Average Island Scale (Ctrl A) will scale all the various islands to be the same 'resolution' - so big polygons in the model will take up much more room than small polys. This avoids all the issues with some parts being blurry while others are sharp.
For the auto arrangement, it's called Pack Islands from the same menu (Ctrl P). Be aware though that if you have say, 2 identical polys that you want to use the same part of the texture, pack islands doesn't appear to pay any attention. It thinks there should be no UV overlap and so separates them out. Handy in some cases, not so much in others. Not sure if that's any different in 2.5. I should check.
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Interesting, it seems to work ok, but the islands are not arranged in a way it will make it easier for me to do the textures...
STILL, better than spending +80 hours uv'ing a so-so model (on a more complex model I would go all the way manually uv'ing it so far).
Thanks for the tip VA, will keep it in mind.
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Warning, HUEG post imminent.
Ok, before we get to the UV mapping part, some info for Dekker: Your 3ds model has some nasty geometry errors (duplicate polies and other things I don't even know what happened there) in the areas marked below, but don't worry it's fixed now. I also did some other cleanup, made the cockpit and the "hooks" part of the main model and applied smooth groups... it's still not the most efficient model, but to explain UV mappig it will do nicely.
(https://share.ols.inode.at/QTJA19ZQM6WF6AAJLTB5H8OWNYQKSB4I6NT7VTXH)
Now, let's get down to business.
Step 1 - We start with the upper part of the main hull, select the faces that are (close to) horizontal and do a planar mapping along the z-axis (= from top down). Observe the yellow rectangular outline on the model showing the mapping plane and the result on the right side. Note: the model could also be mapped so that it's mirrored along the middle, but I find the resulting seam ugly, since it really stands out when you do some scratches/weathering on the texture. So I usually go the non-mirrored route on the central parts (the left/right flank I usually do mirrored, since you never see those parts simultaneously on screen)
(https://share.ols.inode.at/YTX458NQ2ZUJ8JFUH6F0HJSN7MT3FQJDKHHPP6FQ)
Step 2 - Next come the flanks; as mentioned above, select both the right/left parts and do a planar mapping along the x-axis (straight from the side). So far, so easy.
(https://share.ols.inode.at/6A0CTP8BUNLC7EZC1TEGJYU5GBT6H0WNK71DV9PQ)
Step 3 - Now comes the first tricky part, the faces between the top and the flanks. Those faces are roughly at 45° between the x and z axis, so an orthogonal mapping would result in serious pixel-stretching, which will give you eye cancer. So what do we do? We select the faces in question and perform a planar mapping to the average normal of all the selected faces, again watch the yellow outline showing the mapping plane.
(https://share.ols.inode.at/VA32P2EPUT6ERZI8BCDTL0G6FHJAP91KJ3L951YY)
Step 4 - Now if we look at the top part and the part we just mapped side by side, we see that they fit more or less together. At this point you always have to make a decision: Do you want that part mapped seamlessly or without any stretched pixels? The answer always depends on what you plan to put on the texture in the end, things like panel lines you can usually line up pretty easily on the texture so that the seam is not visible. On the other hand, heavy weathering and other random patterns are very hard to match manually on the texture.
(https://share.ols.inode.at/JHQZ9QVF03C30TEKWZZZJCW85FZRR8NAPDAX46CC)
In this case I went with the seamless option, since the resulting pixel-stretching is very moderate and hard to see.
(https://share.ols.inode.at/9OFHIT3ET2DDE0KIOK0GRWQH02EC8RPFG5XYYZCS)
Step 4 - The bottom is relatively easy, select the faces and do a planar z-axis mapping again.
(https://share.ols.inode.at/T5DL5WTF970UGQ1V8J7WS8GCA3LE4JDXNRISNC9V)
Step 5 - The rear end is a nice example of the paper model approach. The flat part straight to the rear is mapped planar along the y-axis (straight from behind). The parts around it were all done in the same way: select the faces and do a planar mapping along the average face normal, scale/rotate the result so that it matches to the central part and then weld it onto the central part. The identical parts on the left/right side were stacked on top of each other.
(https://share.ols.inode.at/1P6FZPXOA7524VJCXXP5OEJ6JH4HHF0H6EX65UUE)
Step 6 - The little face there is also part of the main hull (and not the out pods), so we map it planar to its face normal and scale/weld it to the rear section we just mapped before. Also the corresponding face on the front of the wing were done like that.
(https://share.ols.inode.at/1ZG5VZGSW6WLKGQ4YUKFAUXG0ULDOGSPF9TB9046)
Step 7 - Ok, let's see what we have so far; we scale the 4 resulting "islands" correctly in respect to each other, arrange them in somewhat efficient way (for now) and park them somewhere outside the 0/1 UV space so they don't get in the way until we need them again.
(https://share.ols.inode.at/F1QZHH4FBOULIR3RLN6A5XZK7SVE3YJIZAIGSLW4)
To check if the scaling is ok, we apply some checker pattern... seems ok so far.
(https://share.ols.inode.at/0QPRIRJ5FOEJLE5R8Z70YPSX1AESVAV52LWJDFOT)
Next up, we do the cockpit, the pods and the other little do-dads, so stay tuned.
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I do have a tutorial about that (I think it's in the tutorial sticky)
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I'm watching this topic very closely. Thanks for doing this Fishguts.
The processes you explain are obviously doable in other programs but out of curiousity what are you using?
I've read yours Scooby and I enjoyed it. Just trying to get as much perspective on this process as possible :)
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I'm watching this topic very closely. Thanks for doing this Fishguts.
The processes you explain are obviously doable in other programs but out of curiousity what are you using?
I've read yours Scooby and I enjoyed it. Just trying to get as much perspective on this process as possible :)
By the looks of it 3DSMax, not sure on the Version though, but it looks like 9.
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Oh.
I've got Max 9 32 bit.
Maybe I should learn it.
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It's 3DSMax 7. If you have any Max version, i would highly encourage you to learn it, that or Blender. The UV mapping tool alone is much more powerful and user-friendly than Lith can ever be.
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fishguts pretty much hits the nail on the head. lots of the same techniques i use.
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Ok, here comes the rest:
Step 8 - The cockpit is pretty straight-forward, by now this should be self-explanatory.
(https://share.ols.inode.at/L78D8MDLPHNCFBFW75YYRE3Y1CC4A9VVE30LOM8E)
Step 9 - The outer pods are pretty boxy, so again it's always the same procedure: Pick one side that is near orthogonal to one of the x, y, or z axis and do a planar mapping, pick an adjacent side, map it and then scale and weld it onto the already mapped parts. If there are faces not close to one of the orthogonal planes, do a planar mapping along the average face normal. I've selected some faces in the screenshot to make it easier to see which part is where. I'm not going into the other various small bits, since they are all done the same method and are even easier.
(https://share.ols.inode.at/5URK77HCBGB3VE2VRDY2LUW1X7LMSS2XNSHTYZ70)
When all is done comes the fun part: Scale all the "face islands" correctly in respect to each other. I've found that using edges that are part of several islands as scale references is easiest. When all parts are to scale, select all of them and scale them simultaneously to a size where they use up all the available UV space as much as possible. This requires some eye-balling and several iterations of moving parts and scaling again.
Note1: It's impossible to have maximum UV space efficiency and identical scale on all parts. So in the end you might scale up some parts to make better use of the space. When doing this, do it with parts where the non-uniform pixel-density isn't glaringly obvious, and where the increased resolution can be put to use. In this case I've made the cockpit and the outer pods slightly larger to fill up the space.
Note2: You could also use a non-square texture, but I haven't found an easy way in Max to handle it, since the UV editor always shows UV space in squares from 0 to 1. Anybody want to share some tricks how to do it?
(https://share.ols.inode.at/FHCAWD7NQ6OCZLCWRYIKQJHECZ9AYEKDWWOSAUG2)
Looking at the result with the same checker pattern applied again.
(https://share.ols.inode.at/Z6DYQPVINE3EYKTAK2KIG6WC3K6CELDERRCHG815)
Another reason to switch to Max or Blender is that you can do fancy stuff like render ambient occlusion to the texture.
(https://share.ols.inode.at/M4JKNCU8EFQUKM8N8CZLYD1P5C8LK8Q7AAQYML62)
If you apply the ambient occlusion map as a multiplication layer on top of a simple generic metallic texture, you're already halfway done with the texture
(https://share.ols.inode.at/1VVLI49PG9BEMB5ROBC9J4FUD7S1SY2SUXEC1N2G)
I've also slapped on a quick'n'dirty cockpit and some panel lines to demonstrate how to line up details over several separately mapped parts
(https://share.ols.inode.at/VDVHOZ9DBLMUO2P29H31F4T028M2UOIQ2D9QDH4O)
Click here to download the .rar file (https://share.ols.inode.at/ZJJAZE8OLMS9CRP20LWZGD1WRF4GI2VHKFSKT19F), contains the Max scene, the texture in PSD format, the DAE export file and a quick POF conversion without any additional data. Have fun.
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Another reason to switch to Max or Blender is that you can do fancy stuff like render ambient occlusion to the texture.
Wait, WHAT?
Cool results, I'll check how can that be done in blender right away!
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If you are using Max, also try start using Pelt UVmapping+relax in some areas. People tend to think that pelt mapping is crap for non-organic models, but it is quite the contrary.
Also, if you use Max for modeling and UVmapping, there's something else you can do: model and UVmap at the same time. There's some modeling tools that don't screw the UVmapping (others screw it completely). I've been experimenting with this lately, and I must say it makes the process of mapping the model less tedious.
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Fishguts, I've only ever done glowmaps in max. Didn't know about AO but looking at the results, i'm already sold on it.
I'm definitely on my way to being wholly converted. Regarding the UV map as I model comment- as I tend to use a lot of extrusion and boolean joins I don't know if it'd be effective for me. I'm always open to learning new things though. . . .except Blender.
The interface terrifies me.
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Fishguts, I've only ever done glowmaps in max. Didn't know about AO but looking at the results, i'm already sold on it.
I'm definitely on my way to being wholly converted. Regarding the UV map as I model comment- as I tend to use a lot of extrusion and boolean joins I don't know if it'd be effective for me. I'm always open to learning new things though. . . .except Blender.
The interface terrifies me.
Shouldn't matter as long you clean up after the boolean.
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The only thing I can comment about booleans as I quit using them (for sanity sake) is that they usually need cleaning up afterwards. Merging vertices and you have to be careful with smoothing as it can sometimes gets goofed up and look bad. :blah:
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The only thing I can comment about booleans as I quit using them (for sanity sake) is that they usually need cleaning up afterwards. Merging vertices and you have to be careful with smoothing as it can sometimes gets goofed up and look bad. :blah:
So very, very, very true.
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I guess I could do some snapping to grid. . .
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The only thing I can comment about booleans as I quit using them (for sanity sake) is that they usually need cleaning up afterwards. Merging vertices and you have to be careful with smoothing as it can sometimes gets goofed up and look bad. :blah:
So very, very, very true.
The only way I've found to fix this requires an absolute ton of polys (using tesslation or subdivide or something else I can't remember). Course this makes it unusable in the game.
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Regarding the UV map as I model comment- as I tend to use a lot of extrusion and boolean joins I don't know if it'd be effective for me.
With experience you start having an eye for what you can get away with when modelling+UVmapping at the same time.
For instance I know that if I make a big extrusion\bevel on a model, I'll probably have to re-uv that part. If the extrusion is minor (for instance, to simulate a armor plate), I can get away with it, despite the distortion.
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Regarding the UV map as I model comment- as I tend to use a lot of extrusion and boolean joins I don't know if it'd be effective for me.
With experience you start having an eye for what you can get away with when modelling+UVmapping at the same time.
For instance I know that if I make a big extrusion\bevel on a model, I'll probably have to re-uv that part. If the extrusion is minor (for instance, to simulate a armor plate), I can get away with it, despite the distortion.
In Max 9 in Edit Poly mode theres a Preserve UVs checkbox (in the Edit Geometry section). It will attempt to save the uvmap. Sometimes it works great and other it totally messes things up but it's always easier just to check it (besides if it messes things up you'd probably have to redo the uv anyways)
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Actually for some operations, you get better results if you have that box uncheked (depends on what you want to do, though) :)
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Found this little Gem.
http://www.pullin-shapes.co.uk/page8.htm
Roadkill.
and best od all.
ITS FREE!
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Good to see finally moving to a better unwrapper (Blender source)
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Small steps.
Small steps. :)
Current waiting to try the demo of Unfold3d magic pixie version or something.
Roadkill is a gem so far. . . . Joo must all try it.
What happened to that free app topic that used to be here?
I'd stick it in there if I could.
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Dekker, you use 3dsMax correct? Why don't you use its Unwrap UVW tool? It does everything that Roadkill app does, and more. :)
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Truth be told mate, it's just breaking the habit and getting round to using max solely. At the moment I just use it for mirroring occasionally and baking lightmaps.
I've been on lithunwrap for nearly a decade and I still find it useful for importing .cobs and exporting .objs.
Also it can import .pofs ;7
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Fair enough :)
But I'd strongly recommend you made the effort to start using Max for everything, since you have it. Its a stupidly powerful software, and you have solid tutorials for pretty much everything online. You can also acquire some good plugins as well (polyboost ftw!).
I used lithunwrap and blender when I started modelling. They just don't compare (except the price of course). Its like comparing a porsche with a fiat :P