[Scooby_Doo]

Max 9,  I rarely use UVW Map (basically what Lith does well), unless what section I'm currently mapping fits well with either planiar, cyclindar or spherical.  I could never get used to mapping the entire top/bottom/etc.... and painting the thing as a whole. Hence i use unwrap UVs, which tears the model apart, then I go in and recombine sorta like a paper model. 

[Colonol Dekker]

Hmmm,


I may have MAx R4 somewhere but i've heard it's a bit didgy under Vista. I never got my head around max, i was indoctrinated into TS from an early age

Oh yeah Scoob, i recently saved all the pages of your old Texturing tutorial

[Scooby_Doo]

Even 7 is kinda dodgy under Vista. It crashes when it exits (which is no biggie, just annoying).

LOL I should upload my collection of photoshop action scripts so even I don't lose them.

[Colonol Dekker]

I managed to buy a R4 off an old mate under the ingfluence of alcahol for fifteen quid...

I doubt i can find a bargain like that for 7+.....
I'm working like a trooper to produce something good. Quick question again Scoob, The little bits and bobs, Vents, Rivets and hardware, Where do you get those from. Because i'm googleing imnages but nothing quite right comes up

[Scooby_Doo]

The textures??   I got most of mine from Freespace and Descent, although I'm finding more and more stuff for doom/halflife/quake.  A lot of the time its just a tiny piece of the texture that I end up using (something like: "hey sweet, this would make a great.....")
The rivets are simple 3-5pixel brushes with beveling.

[Nuke]

i do flat projections mostly, but on sections that arent always flat. then i drag points around so that the uv mapping is equally distributed, as if you peeled the ship flat, painted it, then folded it back up. it used to be i wouldnt project anything thats at more than a 30 degree angle from the plane of projection. but now il do things at extreme angles, i just sorta have to pull the verts apart in 2d so that the grid pattern looks square and even across the surface.

on some cases i do something exotic, like a spherical map. you can see this on the satyr. it looks ok till you find the seam. avoid theese like the plague, however there are times when it needs to be done. like if you want a pattern to cover a spherical surface and meet up at all seams. its difficult but possible. it usually means you have to manually paint over the seam so that it properly connects.

the most brownie points for space scrounging goes to the ragnarok/valhalla. they use the same map mostly. theres still space for when i get around to modeling debris, damage areas, ect, as well as special parts for the carrier varient. its a modular ship desigh

proper sectioning is the key to a good looking map. it max its easy to set up sections by using the smooth groups, theese can be saved and called up later so you dont spend most of your time selecting polies. truespace can do the same thing, but its more complicated, you have to use a different material per section. theres some tool+ctrl combo that allows you to select every face with that material. once uv mapping is done you can apply a material to the whole ship for conversion. that should be the last thing you do, if you want to view your texturing progress while you texture, apply a material to the ship and don't save (or save a backup first). that way if you have to tweak a section of the uv map you dont have to select all its polies.

i always do initial projections first and i dont try to condense the uv map down to one texture's worth of space until everything is projected flat. then you can do whatever voodoo needs to be done to make the best use of texture space. leave plenty of space so you can select sections with the marquee tool in the uv editor, this makes the sections easy to manipulate and tweak.

i can spit out tips all day but your best bet is to work at it, get experienced. you will do 20 ships and still will find new tricks that no one thought of before. uv mapping is an art, just as much as modeling or making the ship.

[Colonol Dekker]

I followed some of that. . . I'm working at the basics of skinning, modelling i'm comfortable with but i've been UV aware for a day now.

[Stormkeeper]

Where's this tutorial you were talking about ?

[Scooby_Doo]

i do flat projections mostly, but on sections that arent always flat. then i drag points around so that the uv mapping is equally distributed, as if you peeled the ship flat, painted it, then folded it back up. it used to be i wouldnt project anything thats at more than a 30 degree angle from the plane of projection. but now il do things at extreme angles, i just sorta have to pull the verts apart in 2d so that the grid pattern looks square and even across the surface.

Unwrap UV kinda does this, except you have to reconnect the pieces back together, but they'll all be correctly sized.

on some cases i do something exotic, like a spherical map. you can see this on the satyr. it looks ok till you find the seam. avoid theese like the plague, however there are times when it needs to be done. like if you want a pattern to cover a spherical surface and meet up at all seams. its difficult but possible. it usually means you have to manually paint over the seam so that it properly connects.

I dunno if Lith has this feature, but in max you can activate the UVW map subobject and rotate the sphere/cylindar until the seam disappears (assuming you not showing the entire sphere).

[Nuke]

you don't really need lith if you're using a ts higher than version 5 and i did with out it back when i used ts4. i view lith as another conversion and have always been wary of converting a model too many times.

[Colonol Dekker]

I'm stuck with 3.2 for now.
The main reason i'm drawn to Lith is the whole "save uv" feature. I just don't know else to make a texture template.

[Water]

Thanks for the tips:yes:
Two questions for ya to have a pop at:
I've only got TS3.2 so i'm a bit unsure of whether you mean make the amendments in TS or in Lithunwrap.
Also which UV mapper prog would you reccomend (freewar/sharewar) for when i elevate to higher poly models?

Make the changes in Lith.
I can highly recommend Blenders unwrapper - BUT - If you are happy with TS, you will most likely hate Blenders interface. Wings3D also has an unwrapper.

Your main aim at this stage is to get an unwrap that you can succesfully texture. Your first attempt at a texture will tell you more about what you should change on the unwrap than a whole bunch of tips. 

This was a Blender auto unwrap (middle ship)  The texture density is even and there is less distortion.  The disadvantage is it creates more parts.  The check pattern is smaller because it is using a lot more texture space. The downside for you would be on most models it's harder to see where all the parts belong. This is more just a fast unwrap to show you the lower distortion style of unwraping.

So less distortion = more parts = more texturing choice, normal maps but more time spent.

[IPAndrews]

A rule of thumb based on my experience. The more you try to use every single scrap of uv space, the more bitty and complicated your uv map ends up.

For example I that ship above. It's pretty flat. I'd be looking to do 90% of in two groups of polygons. A top down and a bottom up view. Maybe with a handful of groups for the back of the fuselage, the front of the wing tips and engines. All of which would distort badly if textured from above or below.

I uv mapped a surprising number of TBP ships this way, and nobody noticed. Now if Water would like to show you his super efficient uv mapping with ultra low distortion?

I'm not going to say one method is better than the other. Experiment and do what works best for each individual ship.

[Colonol Dekker]

Cheers,
The more i listen the more i get a kitle more insight:yes: at the moment i've only used the box unwrap as instructed on the cobra mk3 to do what your'e saying about keeping the map to the top and bottom, i'm guessing i'd do it as planar instead how would i differentiate/isolate the back parts? Just use my eyes/brain and move them no special tools or settings needed?

[Vasudan Admiral]

As with most things, it's a quality vs quantity ratio. I much prefer to go the super-efficient-use-of-texture-space route because of the much better quality it adds to the final result (and I can't stand badly stretched bits), but this comes at a cost of putting a fair bit more time into each ship.

The big-chunks-of-mesh UV method IPAndrews describes above is a good place to start when learning UV mapping, because it's easier to do and if the method suits you well, then you'll keep doing it - but if not you'll naturally develop better methods that do suit you as you progress.

Cheers,
The more i listen the more i get a kitle more insight:yes: at the moment i've only used the box unwrap as instructed on the cobra mk3 to do what your'e saying about keeping the map to the top and bottom, i'm guessing i'd do it as planar instead how would i differentiate/isolate the back parts? Just use my eyes/brain and move them no special tools or settings needed?

For how you isolate those back parts, at this stage I'd suggest you just eyeball it and select the faces that you don't think will be properly represented by a top/bottom projection. Once those faces are selected, apply a planar projection from the front/back.

[IPAndrews]

Cheers,
to do what your'e saying about keeping the map to the top and bottom, i'm guessing i'd do it as planar instead

Correct.

how would i differentiate/isolate the back parts? Just use my eyes/brain and move them no special tools or settings needed?

I would try to select the forward and backward facing polygons. You can do that by boxing over them in the main uv space window or by clicking on the polygons in the 3D preview window.

Once selected I would take the polys I want to make forward and backward uvmapped and separate them from the rest of the model's polygons. To start with just dropping them in an untidy heap somewhere out of the way.

I would then re-uvmap the bulk of the ship's polys as planar top-bottom, and re-uvmap the pile of polys I separated earlier as planar front-back.

Finally scale, twist, etc... to make best use of available uv space. Job done.

[Water]

I uv mapped a surprising number of TBP ships this way, and nobody noticed. Now if Water would like to show you his super efficient uv mapping with ultra low distortion?

Fair enough comment. A good tool can make a job go a lot faster and easier. Low distortion is easy - more parts. The more parts you have then the more need you have for tools that can paint directly on the mesh. Efficiency - when you hit high poly ships, that's when Blenders unwraper really starts to shine - at the stage when the Lith user starts to find it tough going. More useful 3d window, there is no getting round Lith is stuck in 2001, while other tools move on. It's not that Lith was bad, just that it got old.

[Colonol Dekker]

Cheers,
to do what your'e saying about keeping the map to the top and bottom, i'm guessing i'd do it as planar instead

Correct.

how would i differentiate/isolate the back parts? Just use my eyes/brain and move them no special tools or settings needed?

I would try to select the forward and backward facing polygons. You can do that by boxing over them in the main uv space window or by clicking on the polygons in the 3D preview window.

Once selected I would take the polys I want to make forward and backward uvmapped and separate them from the rest of the model's polygons. To start with just dropping them in an untidy heap somewhere out of the way.

I would then re-uvmap the bulk of the ship's polys as planar top-bottom, and re-uvmap the pile of polys I separated earlier as planar front-back.

Finally scale, twist, etc... to make best use of available uv space. Job done.

Great:D I think the only thing stopping me was i didn't think i could select in view mode, Now i've actually spent a second or tow playing round i think i've asked all i can at this point. I've had some cracking advice from people here. Many thanks, i think this may help some other people get started at mapping too You're UV tut is linked from the KAraFaq/Oracle too i just noticed.

I'm gonna give this a day or two to play around and try my best. Hopefully have a low poly textured ship later on.


@ Water and Nuke,

Thanks a lot for your feednback too.

Every little helps,