[killface]

The epic adventure of a new modder continues!  When last we left our oft-frustrated hero, he was spending a whole Sunday learning to generate convincing metallic textures in photoshop, with which to skin his embrionic first fighter.

THIS WEEK'S EPISODE: CURSE OF THE BLURRY TEXTURE MAP

Alright, all cheese aside: When I dropped my photoshop image into Blender as a .bmp, it appeared exceptionally hazy for some reason.  This haze only appears in 3D mode; the texture map looks just fine on the UV mapping screen.  I've tried it as a .jpg, .bmp....same blurriness shows up no matter the file format.  Is there some graphical settings in Blender that I'm missing???  Or is this totally normal, will the texture actually look fine in-game?  And Kazan, before you expand the Blender-bashing to this thread, know that I am totally open to recommendations regarding any alternatve, free (key word) program that does better.

Thanks as always

[Unknown Target]

Have you tried actually rendering the model or exporting it into a separate program to view/render it? Many 3D programs use a lower rez version of the texture in editing mode, and only show the full rez texture in rendering mode.

And I suggest Sketchup

[Water]

When I dropped my photoshop image into Blender as a .bmp, it appeared exceptionally hazy for some reason.  This haze only appears in 3D mode; the texture map looks just fine on the UV mapping screen.  I've tried it as a .jpg, .bmp....same blurriness shows up no matter the file format.  Is there some graphical settings in Blender that I'm missing???  Or is this totally normal, will the texture actually look fine in-game?

What size texture are you using?
With Blender in (textured) object mode it should look good. (1024² should look great)
The other reason could be how you unwraped it. (and how much texture space is allocated to the faces)

[killface]

The texture is 2048x2048.  On the UV map screen, it looks as good as it did in Photoshop.  But in 3D mode, it looks ****e.  I did also maxmize the space allocated to the ship's faces on the UV map, should have mentioned that.

UT:  I haven't tried that yet.  Do you mean exporting to truespace, for example, and viewing the texture from there?  I'll check into this 'Sketchup', too...though it sounds...oh, I don't know....sketchy?   

Water:  As far as unwrapping goes, is there any other way to unwrap in Blender other than UKEY - UNWRAP on the UV screen?

[Unknown Target]

www.sketchup.com
Try the free version, see if you like it. It has full functionality, it just can't export to other formats (although I think there's a way around that).

And if Blender has a render function click it, or yea, export to Truespace and click the render object button.

[Water]

The texture is 2048x2048.  On the UV map screen, it looks as good as it did in Photoshop.  But in 3D mode, it looks ****e.  I did also maxmize the space allocated to the ship's faces on the UV map, should have mentioned that.
Water:  As far as unwrapping goes, is there any other way to unwrap in Blender other than UKEY - UNWRAP on the UV screen?

Yes you can tell Blender exactly how you want it unwrapped.
Switch from object mode to UV Face Select mode.
Alt + right click - will allow you to place a seam.
Place a seam around an area you want to keep together. Think in terms of unfolding.
In the UV Calculation tab
Use Conformal for boxy - tech type objects.
Use Angle Based for more organic shapes.
Then hit U
I unwrap in pieces
Use a texture with check patterns to look for distortions.
I use several - 2x2 check pattern up to 64x46 (1024)
It only unwraps the faces you have selected. This allows you to move on to the next part (just move it out of the way) Once everything has been checked for distortion, select everything and unwrap again. This will get everything the same size.
There is more - like pinning and unwraping from view - but first get familiar with seams.

will look into the blurry issue

[killface]

Sweet.  I knew about placing seams, but everything else is new to me.  I had actually been just manually resizing the faces of the ship in the UV screen to make the proportions right.  Very time-consuming.  I'll try out all the other unwrapping options - as well as exporting to truespace for a rendered view - tomorrow and report back.  Thanks for the advice, guys.

[killface]

Well now this is just damn odd.  I'm working on a different computer now, and not only is there no blurry texture problem, but on THIS PC I can actually import my hull texture as the original .psd file from photoshop.  Not sure if I want to do that, as the file is quite large, and texture quality in 3D mode is maintained when I switch to other formats.  So it's looking like the issue is with my home computer, for some reason...

UT: I tried out sketchup.  It does seem to have a more intuitive interface.  But how does one convert from .skp files to anything else?

[Vasudan Admiral]

Could it be your image quality settings in your graphics card driver?

Blender by default seems to have very strong mipmapping - especially when viewing the texture at an angle in the 3d view. You can turn the mipmapping off in the "System and Open GL" tab of the options pane. You access the pane like this:



(sorry - the pic is pinched from the blender tutorial in progress, so the bottom half is about a different option in a different tab. )

[Water]

Well now this is just damn odd.  I'm working on a different computer now, and not only is there no blurry texture problem, but on THIS PC I can actually import my hull texture as the original .psd file from photoshop.  Not sure if I want to do that, as the file is quite large, and texture quality in 3D mode is maintained when I switch to other formats.  So it's looking like the issue is with my home computer, for some reason...

UT: I tried out sketchup.  It does seem to have a more intuitive interface.  But how does one convert from .skp files to anything else?

PSD's do work. Didn't know that.
One problem with Blender is keeping up with all the new features they keep adding. (nevermind actually using all of them) They just introduced a release candidate for 2.44. Life is so hard for Blender users 

[Unknown Target]

Well now this is just damn odd.  I'm working on a different computer now, and not only is there no blurry texture problem, but on THIS PC I can actually import my hull texture as the original .psd file from photoshop.  Not sure if I want to do that, as the file is quite large, and texture quality in 3D mode is maintained when I switch to other formats.  So it's looking like the issue is with my home computer, for some reason...

UT: I tried out sketchup.  It does seem to have a more intuitive interface.  But how does one convert from .skp files to anything else?

With the free version all you can export to is .skp and Google Earth's format, unfortunately.