[JGZinv]

Hello all...

I'm working towards texturing the Archangel (archy) from Tachyon the Fringe.
But I've hit a minor snag.

First -

After separating the wireframes on top of the "UV space" surface in LithUnwrap,
the frames are too large to fit in the original gray square - so that I may export the UV
via bitmap to use later on in Photoshop.

Basically, I need to enlarge this gray square in my image here, to include all the wireframes. How can I do this?

Enlarging the exported bitmap size does nothing for me, only what is in the square is displayed in the resulting image. I'm just getting started with Lith - so I'll probably need a step-by-step. I'm using this tutorial -   http://members.lycos.nl/jonim8or/shiptex_tut.html which I find to be a lot easier to understand than the one in karajorma's faq (might update with this one added).

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d1/GuardianZinv/Tachyon/LithExample1.gif

Second -

Using most of the afternoon yesterday, I believe I finished the UV map orientation on the Archy. Could someone just load it up and do a once-over check to see if I have it right? I'm going under the assumption that it's best to have all the squares the same size or as close as possible to each other on close panels. If not, then the section in between should try to "bridge the gap" by being a "middle size" for the other two.

No point in doing 11 some odd other ships incorrectly because I didn't realize my error
the first time...  Lum file is attached.

Lastly -

If you have the model file there... there is no "bottom" hull to the fighter per say.
Is that a model error, something I need to add a UV map to from scratch?  It has me stumped.

Thanks for the help.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Col. Fishguts]

1. The gray box is your UV space from 0 to 1. Rescale all your parts so that they fit in it. You can leave parts outside the square, but the UV space just repeats itself. Make a simple test map (like in the tutorial you linked) and load that instead of the checkers, and you'll see pretty quickly how it works, by just dragging stuff around and looking at the model in the preview window.

2. Well, you seem to have understood the basic principle. The checkers are a visual help to keep the pixel densitiy of the map the same in average (otherwise the model will look pretty weird). The goal should be to map the ship so that all checkers are roughly the same size and as square as possible (otherwise they're stretched).

3. The bottom part is blank because it has no material assigned. Assign one by selecting those polies and then right-clicking on a material and choosing "Assign". Btw, why are there 26 materials ? For a fighter you should only use one map, so select all polies -> right-click -> Unassign -> Material. Then assign them all to one material.

Also, the shield mesh doesn't need to be UV mapped, so you don't need it in Lith. It's just blocking the view in the preview window.

[JGZinv]

1. Oy if I have to scale them all - that means I'll have to adjust all of the maps again correct?
The way they were scaled appeared to be incorrect, so I scalled them out to a proper shape
and to get the squares to match up. Some of them were just plain bad in the original.

3. The ship was sent to me that way from the person working with the model using 3dsMax.
I was wondering about the number of materials myself.
As to the shield - that was transfered over as well... I typically just hide it.

Thanks for the info. Guess it's back to work...

[Col. Fishguts]

If you already started to make the texture yes, changing UV coordinates means changing the map also.

And yeah, test things with a bmp, you'll see problems quicker than with the checker pattern.

EDIT: Setting up material properties like transparency of the cockpit glass won't do any good in Lith. For the glass to work as you'd expect, it needs to be mapped with a transparent map. And the cockpit interior needs to be a seperate submodel. Visible cockpits are kinda tricky though, so it might not be the easiest thing to start with.

[bizzybody]

If Lith is anything like its successor, Ultimate Unwrap3D, it's much easier to map by putting different materials on different sections of the model. then in the unwrapper you can choose to select faces by material so clicking one face on the map selects ALL faces with that material, which can then be moved, scaled, rotated etc together.

Once you have the map done, export it as a bmp with 1pix wide lines, no smoothing, then paint the entire fighter model with that bmp, no tile repeats. (Export the model too from Lith!) If all went right, all the faces should be outlined with the lines from the exported UV map.