[Liberator]

What method og UV Mapping do you guys recomend:  Cubic, Cylindrical, Spherical, or Planar?

I'm having a hard time getting a decent map out of Lithunwrap 1.3.

[IPAndrews]

You'll get best results using different styles of mapping on different parts of the ship. It is quite rare that one style of mapping will do for a whole ship.

[Killfrenzy]

Depends on how many subobjects you've got!

If you've got a fighter (depending on it's shape) then you have to settle with one.

[IPAndrews]

It has nothing to do with sub objects. It has to do with polygons. You can select any subset of polygons you want and map them using any style you want.

[KARMA]

i think kf was talking about number of maps, but even in this case you can use as many maps as you want even on fighters, and you don't need to switch map for different objects, you can for example map some polys of a subobject with a texture used elsewhere (althought it could be useful to have an individual map if you share the same object between different ships)
the point is that usually planar uvmaps (and the variants: decal and face) are the way to go, but you have to make a  wise selection of the polys, using for example the same uvmap for all the connected/near to each other polys that have a SIMILAR orientation and that will be mapped with the same texture style. Uvmapping a mesh means therefore to individuate the group of polys that can be uvmapped with the same uv operation, like if you split the mesh in group of polys, like a mosaic, and then you assign to each group of uvmapped polys an uvspace, a portion of the square you have in the center of the lithunwrap window, maybe assigning different materials if you need more space.
you use different uvtools (cylindrical, spherical) for very specific elements with this kind of mesh. like cylindrical engines or spherical objects.
box uvamp may be useful during the selection of the faces, since it give a view from different angles of the polys

[aldo_14]

If it's lith, i'd imagine you'd have to settle with cubic mapping.

[Liberator]

This is what I'm trying to get mapped so I can texture it.



It started out as a take on a Magella attack tank from Gundam but I decided to make it an assault bomber.

Before you ask it was done in Blender and has 494 vertices and 543 faces.

[KARMA]

Originally posted by aldo_14
If it's lith, i'd imagine you'd have to settle with cubic mapping.

why?? there are iirc 5 or 6 different tools you can use, not only cubic

[IPAndrews]

Your basic front, back, top, side should suffice. The only area of interest is those inside faces on those "wings". Box will bundle them with the side mapping but you could pull them out and do them seperately if you wanted.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by KARMA


why?? there are iirc 5 or 6 different tools you can use, not only cubic

From what I remember, Lith only UVs the whole model, so you can't select individual groups, etc.  And of the types of maps you can apply to a model, cubic is the only one I can think of that wouldn't distort the resulting file.

[Rampage]

I usually use cubic on the first run, when I need to get a good perspective on the vessel.  But when I start to arrange UV and discover that some polygons that belong together are in different positions on different faces of the "cube", I tend to group those polygons together using planar mapping.

[KARMA]

Originally posted by aldo_14


From what I remember, Lith only UVs the whole model, so you can't select individual groups, etc.  And of the types of maps you can apply to a model, cubic is the only one I can think of that wouldn't distort the resulting file.

then let me say that you haven't used it a lot, or maybe you used some really early version.

you can select any face or group of faces both from the render screen and the working screen using the selecting tools
if mesh is splitted in objects you can select all the polys of the subobject, but also you can select individual faces from the poly group (and not the whole object)
if materials are already applied (even  solid colors in truespace will work) you can select all the faces with a specific material or individual faces within the faces with this material (this is the best strategy in my opinion)
if you want you can create groups of polys assiging them materials directly in lith, and then work with those groups individually
and the uvtools distort the maps only if the uvspaces doesn't follow the geometry shape (so if you apply a general planar uvmap on a complex shape, instead of making polygroups)
and you can see in real time the result using the render (if your maps are already done)

[TopAce]

My suggestion is that you do your whole model using as many independent parts as possible. UV Map them independently according on their shape. When you are finished, put them together.

This way you can better texture your model than using one UV Mapping on the whole ship. It looks quite strange.

My main problem in model making is this too. I make a ship, and some sides have very stupid texturing and that prevents me from making a good ship with good texturing. Exception can be the GTGs Antwerpen, which was a topic a few month before, somehow I had no serious problems texturing it. I think I haven't used any UV mappings after all.

Seek up that topic and download that ship!

[KARMA]

as i've just written in my precedent reply to aldo, you DON'T need all this mess
why the hell should you be forced to use only one uv on the whole ship??
c'mon i don't say it is friendly user but surely it isn't THAT difficult, try to open an original model in lith and look at how it is done if you really can't manage it by yourself

[Bobboau]

if you want to do it the corect way you will make you're ship out of one subobject and map it useing only one (or two for very large models) texture map, trying to get an even density of texels acros all polygons, I use a noise map to ensure even density and non distorted progection, I usualy end up within one texel of acuracy

[IPAndrews]

I'm not sure why everyone thinks Lith will only map whole models. Even my FAQ shows that it will select groups of individual polygons. In any event:

You can use more than one material on a ship. You'll get an almost insignificant speed hit for each extra material you use but let's face it, we all have 2 gig CPUs now.

You can select individual polys by drag boxing them in Lith or in any of the wireframe preview windows. The bottom line is that Lith is the dog's bollocks.

You can apply plain colour materials to polys in truespace and Lith will put them in the same material when it loads the model. In all honesty though this isn't as useful as it used to be. Since Lith's select from preview window works so amazingly well.

Mapping individual pieces of your model seperately before you stick the model together and stabilise it has a lot going for it.

As always though. Gluing pieces of a model together to make a whole requires care. The resulting model needs stabilising. You need to pay particular attention to areas around the joins and look out for tiny extra polygons that may have been created. Or you listen to Bobboau and make your models out of one object from the start. It will take twice as long but the stabilisation part will take half the time.