[Colonol Dekker]

Using tiled cap textures i can map well enough, But fighter textures etc just bug the crud out of me (making them i mean)

[bizzybody]

Just for fun I did a Star Trek type ship called the NCC-1958 Edsel for a story on the Star Traks fanfic site. The Deflector dish is shaped like the Edsel car's 'horse collar' grille center and the engine nacelles combine elements of the quad headlights and the chrome trimmed concave areas on the rear fenders while the impulse engines on the back of the saucer are shaped like the taillights.

Making that model in tS4, I figured out a trick for creating textures to fit properly into the existing UV map. Select the faces where the texture will go, then seperate them from the model. Use a UV unwrapper on that new mesh to create a grid map then size the texture to fit that grid map.

When painted on those exact same faces on the model, the texture will fit perfectly. (Now I suppose I'll have to dig up the NCC-1958 Edsel model...)

[Water]

I've only had the one problem with the version I linked in the Ship Creation Guide. The duplication of the same texture used on different submodels. A relatively minor issue. I've mapped all kinds of models with it. Some of them quite complex.

Your ability using this software says more about your hard earned skills than Lithunwrap 1.3 

Some unwraps limit what texturisers can do. For Mods to find more texturers you need good unwraps, so they are free to do what they want without major problems. Better yet if they can unwrap the model themselves because the software can do the job the way they want.

From a new users point of view Lithunwrap 1.3 is confusing. A splatter of overlapping polys. I found it hard to get a model unwrapped the way I wanted. You don't really get a choice of how the model is unwrapped because it uses box mapping.


I like the Blender unwrap because it allows you to chose how the  polys are grouped - using seams. The lscm minimises distortion of the polys. Hit unwrap and the sections are all laid out seperatly. Lithunwrap makes you jump through hoops to get to this point. A tutorial I saw for wings3d, shows that it might be a good choice for a free unwrapper also.

After hitting the unwrap button it's a lot less intimidating than lith. Then start flipping and stacking.



A highly skilled user can produce a good unwrap with Lithunwrap 1.3. But a less skilled person using blender (or any more modern software ) can produce a good map with less effort.

For example - I would guess that some of the unwraps for inferno, which were done using top + bottom + front + back maps, were because the software was too hard to use. Especially with so many models to do, time becomes the problem. They got the job done, but better software could have saved a lot of effort.

So I wouldn't recomend version 1.3 (2001) to a new user. You would mostly end up with someone who tried unwrapping and decided it wasn't for them.

[Colonol Dekker]

Are the above pics from Blender ?

[Flipside]

That's why it's a good idea to create your model as lots of little submodels and then group the parts together and remap/bake if neccesary. It's a lot easier to keep control of things if you keep to smaller groups of polies, one pipe is a lot easier to map in one go than an entire engine, for example. That's why I stick by Lightwave, the layer system is great for hiding/revealing the parts you aren't working on, and it works for the UV View as well, so I can map several different parts onto the same UV Map one at a time.
Deep Paint 3D is a pretty useful tool, but to honest, I mostly use it for the photoshop plugin, I port the Bitmap and UV to PS (The UV/Colour/Shine/Bump are split into different layers), work on the texture in there and then port it back again to see how it looks.

The hard part for me is not so much making the UV's as making textures, it's hard work to get good levels of detail in them.

[Water]

Are the above pics from Blender ?

Yes - The left window was set to UV face select and the right to UV/image editor.

What i'm starting to do is print out an unmapped picture of the model. Take to it with pencil and pens for a general design. Then put the seams in the model so that the the unwrap will be able to cope with the design.

If you make a mistake the unwrap looks like crap - add more seams till you to get it right. Just think of it as cutting the model into regions of texture.

[aldo_14]

That's why it's a good idea to create your model as lots of little submodels and then group the parts together and remap/bake if neccesary. It's a lot easier to keep control of things if you keep to smaller groups of polies, one pipe is a lot easier to map in one go than an entire engine, for example. That's why I stick by Lightwave, the layer system is great for hiding/revealing the parts you aren't working on, and it works for the UV View as well, so I can map several different parts onto the same UV Map one at a time.
Deep Paint 3D is a pretty useful tool, but to honest, I mostly use it for the photoshop plugin, I port the Bitmap and UV to PS (The UV/Colour/Shine/Bump are split into different layers), work on the texture in there and then port it back again to see how it looks.

The hard part for me is not so much making the UV's as making textures, it's hard work to get good levels of detail in them.

I just use the Max face-material id groupings to split it up.  I've started (of late) doing 'proper' Lods with different maps, though, so I often end up splitting models-to-map simply because it's slightly quicker and I'm working with a pre-drawn (well, rendered views) map anyways.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Your ability using this software says more about your hard earned skills than Lithunwrap 1.3 

From a new users point of view Lithunwrap 1.3 is confusing. A splatter of overlapping polys. I found it hard to get a model unwrapped the way I wanted. You don't really get a choice of how the model is unwrapped because it uses box mapping.

I'd have to disagree there - in Lith, if I select all faces and apply a box projection, it arranges according to the six sides of the cube map - it's Blender that gives me the huge splatter of polys when a cube map is applied to all selected faces. :\

I got the hang of Lith within hours thanks to IPA's tutorial and my own fiddling. Since then I've come a long way in all 3d apps I use - especially Blender's mesh editing area, but using Blenders UV mapper is bamboozling me completely, and has been since you first mentioned in this thread that Blender has an unwrapper.

1) I seem to be utterly unable to view the ship in object mode AND have the UV map still displayed at the same time - which is really helpful in Lith. Frustratingly enough though, the video tutorial on unwrapping clearly shows the bloke Greybeard managing it no worries.

2) The UV face select system seems really weird and awkward - from what I can tell, to even begin editing the UV map, you need to have your 3d view(s) in UV Face Select mode (meaning you can't have a current progress view to see what it's looking like while texturing), then you need to select all the faces in order to have them all editable in the UV/Image Editor window, and only then can you begin editing the individual faces positions on the UV map.
Surely there's a more streamlined system?

3) Other than selecting edges one by one, I can't seem to find a good way of selecting almost flat surface edges to turn into seams. On the complex shapes I'm working with, this means I would have to select hundreds of edges one by one. Is there such a selection function?

4) Is there any way to affect the way the unwrapper works - ie, automatically split (or seamify) edges of sharp angles? It's quite frustrating to hit unwrap and have a horrible smear of polygons appear - some degree of automation here would help a lot.

Any help there would be much appreciated.

Oh and one final thing - Water, you appear to have missed out on the traditional beaming!

[Flipside]

That's why it's a good idea to create your model as lots of little submodels and then group the parts together and remap/bake if neccesary. It's a lot easier to keep control of things if you keep to smaller groups of polies, one pipe is a lot easier to map in one go than an entire engine, for example. That's why I stick by Lightwave, the layer system is great for hiding/revealing the parts you aren't working on, and it works for the UV View as well, so I can map several different parts onto the same UV Map one at a time.
Deep Paint 3D is a pretty useful tool, but to honest, I mostly use it for the photoshop plugin, I port the Bitmap and UV to PS (The UV/Colour/Shine/Bump are split into different layers), work on the texture in there and then port it back again to see how it looks.

The hard part for me is not so much making the UV's as making textures, it's hard work to get good levels of detail in them.

I just use the Max face-material id groupings to split it up.  I've started (of late) doing 'proper' Lods with different maps, though, so I often end up splitting models-to-map simply because it's slightly quicker and I'm working with a pre-drawn (well, rendered views) map anyways.

Yeah, most systems have a seperate by material setup etc, I find Lightwave easiest, but then, that's obviously because I use Lightwave a lot I used to do a UV Map for each LOD, but it really was hard graft for dubious output. Nowadays I make a 'Core' of the ship, which is, for a fighter, about 300 polies, and use that as the smallest LOD, and then 'bolt' things on, UV-ing and texturing as I go.

[Scooby_Doo]

Normally if I've got multiple parts that use the same texture, I merge them into one object (btw, no vertex welding, that way i can extract them quickly).  Apply a mesh select to a certain section, unwrap it, push it off the main uv mapping section (0-1 area) then work on the next part.. and so forth... merge all the uv map parts back together.  Run Textporter on that object, and finally decompose the merged mesh. Not sure if that made any sense or not.

For lodding i do the main LOD, unwrap it then create the sublod's... removing and welding as i do, UV mapping is less important on those.

[Scooby_Doo]

HAHA poor bizzbody, practically everything flipside says i say the opposite   

[Flipside]

Well, asking the best way to UVMap is sort of like asking what the best 3D program is, the only real correct answer is 'The one you feel most comfortable using'

Edit : In a way, it's good to see people approach models from lots of different directions, none of the ways of doing it are 'wrong' as such, but they provide a nice variation of models

[Scooby_Doo]

Plus it all depends on if your working with just one model or your like me have a ton in development.  So far I've still got 2 that need painting, 7 that need uv mapping, and a bunch that are sitting in limbo LOL

[Water]

I'd have to disagree there - in Lith, if I select all faces and apply a box projection, it arranges according to the six sides of the cube map - it's Blender that gives me the huge splatter of polys when a cube map is applied to all selected faces. :\

Seriously i didn't know how you guys managed to use box projection for unwrapping. I could manage it for a simple model, but as the complexity went up -- so did my frustration. I was using models from vp files and since the fighters have only one texture, I was chasing bits that Lith had decided were connected somewhere else.

From this thread I have learned there are modeling stratagies to cope with this.  Having not created the models I was trying to unwrap I missed the obvious references to textures in IPA's tutorial.  With Blender, how the model is sectioned is chosen before the unwrap. If the unwrap looks like a mess, then  i didn't section it well.

Here goes

To insert a seam -  In the modeling window (Edit mode)  - be in vertex select mode -(just for now). select some adjacent verticies.

hit Control E - gives you a choice of Mark seam and Clear seam plus other stuff.

Seam up an area you would like to be one piece.

Then get a split screen view (to switch back and forth between single and double window hit Control Up Arrow)

Set left window from Edit to UV Face Select
Set the right to Window type UV/Image Editor and check under view that Draw Shadow Mesh and Draw Faces are selected

To toggle the left window between Edit Mode and UV Face Select just hit tab.

In the left window (UV Face Select) select a poly in your seamed region - hit Control L to select all in that region.
Move mouse to right window and press E -it will just unwrap that section.
Once the model is all seamed into regions, in left window hit A to select all, in right hit E to unwrap all.

To view textured model-
left screen to Draw Type - Textured. Right screen (image button) open a test pattern image of some sort.

You can select a region using faces or the Linked Flat Faces and then use Region to Loop, then mark a seam.
Having seen some of your models means you know far more about blender selection tools than me. 

I haven't seen any auto function. Let us know if I missed answering anything.

[Vasudan Admiral]

You can select a region using faces or the Linked Flat Faces and then use Region to Loop, then mark a seam.
Having seen some of your models means you know far more about blender selection tools than me. 

Aha! That's exactly the function I was after, and in fact, with the linked flat faces select tool being able to take a maximum angle input, it means that it's a heck of a lot more flexible than I'd expected. (though the hotkey is a bit cumbersome; shift+ctrl+alt+f = ouch)

The rundown's a good help too - thanks a million.

Seriously i didn't know how you guys managed to use box projection for unwrapping. I could manage it for a simple model, but as the complexity went up -- so did my frustration. I was using models from vp files and since the fighters have only one texture, I was chasing bits that Lith had decided were connected somewhere else.

From this thread I have learned there are modeling stratagies to cope with this.  Having not created the models I was trying to unwrap I missed the obvious references to textures in IPA's tutorial.  With Blender, how the model is sectioned is chosen before the unwrap. If the unwrap looks like a mess, then  i didn't section it well.

At least some of your trouble there just might have cropped up because you were opening them like that - I've only ever done UVs in lith from scratch using a cob import.

Aside from that, Lith is very simple to use with a bit of practice and a tutorial. It can get tedious, but there are ways to make unwraping complex models easier. What I do for example is use the paint brush in Truespace to colour code rough sections of hull - pretty much doing the sectioning you'd do in Blender in a separate app.
What Lith really lacks though is the flexibility that I'm just beginning to see in the Blender auto unwrapper. It's the big thing that Lith's been missing, and the thing I've wanted since using Pepakura to unwrap and print out a paper Deimos model.

I'll probably still use Lith if I find a model is too tricky in Blender, but being able to stay in the same app for longer should be a big help for future models.

To view textured model-
left screen to Draw Type - Textured. Right screen (image button) open a test pattern image of some sort.

Yeah, I can view the texture on the model in object mode (ie, without the face lines or seam markings), but I can't seem to edit or even view the UV map while in object mode, which would be a bit annoying when lining bits of texture up with the mesh since I'd have to constantly switch between modes to check more carefully.

I haven't seen any auto function.

Ack, sorry, I descibed that rather poorly. I meant is there any sort of properties, settings or control pannel for the Unwrapping function?

Thanks again for the help.

[bizzybody]

trueSpace 6's UV control is mucho way better than the gross whole object method in 3.2. I'm working on a new version of a ship design from C.J. Cherryh's Alliance/Union universe and I can finally finagle the texturing so it doesn't look like crap.