Shield project - stuck -

Nesmos

Hello,

I'm new to polycount and to 3ds max at that only basic knowledge maybe not even that. I hope someone could help me with the problem I'm stuck with but I've modelled a shield and UV mapped it but texturing it is quite difficult and I don't think I've mapped it out well at all. could anyone tell what I did wrong and help me through it ?

Thanks a lot, will post pictures of UV's and shield below

3D Model: http://p3d.in/pLg8Q

UV'S


Concept

Nesmos

Update:

I've changed the UV's a bit and started on the actual texturing but something seems off. Does the wood texture look alright or even like wood ? any help would be appreciated.

Note: I want to say I'm not demanding for help or anything this is a project I'm doing not just asking for help like form a blank page. I hope I don't offend anyone.

Texture:


Render:

Bek

You could learn a lot by watching some UV'ing tutorials.

I also gave some advice on basic UV stuff in this thread that you may find helpful.

StevenZer

I think you should try baking an ambient occulsion using xnormal or something else and multiply or overlay it ontop of the texture using photoshop or gimp~
What are you using to render this shield?
and btw the texture looks really flat try painting some soft shadows over the edges of the wood.

Nesmos

Thanks for the feedback, I've been messing about with the pelt and relax UV options. I'm rendering in 3ds max using the preset's "mental.ray.daylight.high" to be honest I don't know much about rendering so I thought I'd choose a preset's.

The texture isn't finished I was blocking it out to see how it would look on the model but thanks for the advice it does look better with a soft shadow.

UV's


Checker test


Is the UV better ? I find it a lot better to work with.

Steve Schulze

Well you're not getting any stretching, but you're wasting vast amounts of precious texture space there. You really want to scale the UV islands up so that they feel up as much of the texture as possible, so that you've got the most resolution for your textures once they're on your model.

In this case, I'd take the back shield shape, invert it and put it in the lower right corner. This'll give you the most space possible to scale things up.

Don't be afraid to split your side islands up a bit more if it'll get you some more space. Doing the splits on the sharp corners is going to be your best option there.

EDIT:

Here, this is how I'd probably go about it. You could probably save yourself a little more space by shuffling the edge pieces around or splitting them up some more, but it's likely to make your texturing process a little more cumbersome. In retrospect, I'd probably rotate 180 degrees so that your front plate that you're probably going to want to put the most work into is up the right way as you texture.

Nesmos

Jackablade wrote: »

Well you're not getting any stretching, but you're wasting vast amounts of precious texture space there. You really want to scale the UV islands up so that they feel up as much of the texture as possible, so that you've got the most resolution for your textures once they're on your model.

In this case, I'd take the back shield shape, invert it and put it in the lower right corner. This'll give you the most space possible to scale things up.

Don't be afraid to split your side islands up a bit more if it'll get you some more space. Doing the splits on the sharp corners is going to be your best option there.

EDIT:

Here, this is how I'd probably go about it. You could probably save yourself a little more space by shuffling the edge pieces around or splitting them up some more, but it's likely to make your texturing process a little more cumbersome. In retrospect, I'd probably rotate 180 degrees so that your front plate that you're probably going to want to put the most work into is up the right way as you texture.

Thanks a lot I will try that now, my shield is modelled a little different than yours but I get the concept. may I ask what's wrong with lots of space left ?

Nesmos

Update: So thanks everyone I think I'm going to stick with this UV layout its practically the same as Jackablade's also thanks a lot jack. I will post a finished product unless I run into some trouble or would like to get some criticism.

What do you guys think ?

UV's

StevenZer

You shouldn't waste your uv space because you're wasting resolution for your texture quality the more space will be used by uvs the more good quality you get that's why. and yea the uvs are fine but i think you should check out some texture painting videos like this one.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_L7vO8hGYo"]Hand Painted Weapon: Texturing in Photoshop - YouTube[/ame]

Dethling

There is a very nice hand painted texture tutorial from Thyson Murphy on 3Dmotive.com

If you planning to go this route, I highly suggest to spent the few bucks on it, it helps me a lot.

Nesmos

StevenZer wrote: »

You shouldn't waste your uv space because you're wasting resolution for your texture quality the more space will be used by uvs the more good quality you get that's why. and yea the uvs are fine but i think you should check out some texture painting videos like this one.
Hand Painted Weapon: Texturing in Photoshop - YouTube

Thanks again i know about the hand painted tutorials but i'm without my wacom at the moment so i have to do it by mouse that's why its so clean plus i think it looks alright since its in my style.

Nesmos

Dethling wrote: »

There is a very nice hand painted texture tutorial from Thyson Murphy on 3Dmotive.com

If you planning to go this route, I highly suggest to spent the few bucks on it, it helps me a lot.

Thanks for the suggestion, i've already watched them and learned quite a bit but the textures i was showing didn't have shadows or highlighting because i was stuck on the UV's

StevenZer

Well if you want to know more about UVs you should check out this course.
http://www.digitaltutors.com/tutorial/635-UV-Mapping-Workflows-in-3ds-Max

Choppz

Hey Nesmos

Its good to see with your texture your including highlights and such, however you need to think about lighting direction.

The thing that I've learned is that lighting detail is essential to hand painted textures, you must always have a source of light in your scene, which will effect where your highlights and shadows will be.



Also when you get your tablet back, make the detail a little less straight/sharp and it looks quite flat due to the highlight/seam in the planks being one solid colour throughout, so its best to try and use your tablet to add some variation. What I do like is that behind the plank seams, you added subtle variation to the colour of the wood.

I'm still very much doing the basics of hand painted textures, but in my thread you can see how I progress and I get some great feedback from other people which you could probably transfer to your own work: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=127861

Personally for UV space, I would overlap the UVs for the back of the shield, on top of the UVs for the front of the shield (if you plan for the back of the shield to be wooden too) The reason for this is because you'll save a lot of UV space, giving yourself more resolution for the texture (at the expense of duplicate appearance of the wood on the front/back of the shield).

Hope this helps

Nesmos

Choppz wrote: »

Hey Nesmos

Its good to see with your texture your including highlights and such, however you need to think about lighting direction.

The thing that I've learned is that lighting detail is essential to hand painted textures, you must always have a source of light in your scene, which will effect where your highlights and shadows will be.



Also when you get your tablet back, make the detail a little less straight/sharp and it looks quite flat due to the highlight/seam in the planks being one solid colour throughout, so its best to try and use your tablet to add some variation. What I do like is that behind the plank seams, you added subtle variation to the colour of the wood.

I'm still very much doing the basics of hand painted textures, but in my thread you can see how I progress and I get some great feedback from other people which you could probably transfer to your own work: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=127861

Personally for UV space, I would overlap the UVs for the back of the shield, on top of the UVs for the front of the shield (if you plan for the back of the shield to be wooden too) The reason for this is because you'll save a lot of UV space, giving yourself more resolution for the texture (at the expense of duplicate appearance of the wood on the front/back of the shield).

Hope this helps

This is great thanks,I've just made progress and my wacom has started to work again so the outer metal looks more textured. The wood is the same but i'm going to do two variations one cartoon style like windwaker where it is clean and straight. then a more in depth detailed one when I'm able to do it.

Can i ask what was good and bad on the picture, since you put the bad bit but its on the same side.

Just a note this is in my own style its not to meant to look exactly like a hand painted texture i thought i'd give my little flare to it and i think its quite nice. sorry if this sounded rude

Here's a update for the cartoon one

Preview:


UV's

Choppz

What I mean by that picture is, if the lighting direction is coming from the top then the highlight will be on the opposite side.

Take my wood texture for example:


You have to think what your imaginary light source is going to highlight and whats its going to darken. I just took a couple of minutes quickly showing an example of the part I highlighted earlier. Compare the highlights to the other side, and notice how I added a small shadow on the opposite side. I did the highlights using a Screen layer, and the shadows with a multiply layer which I then tweaked the opacity so I could get the right intensity.



This is a really rough example but I hope you understand what I mean. Always think about lighting

Nesmos

Choppz wrote: »

What I mean by that picture is, if the lighting direction is coming from the top then the highlight will be on the opposite side.

Take my wood texture for example:


You have to think what your imaginary light source is going to highlight and whats its going to darken. I just took a couple of minutes quickly showing an example of the part I highlighted earlier. Compare the highlights to the other side, and notice how I added a small shadow on the opposite side. I did the highlights using a Screen layer, and the shadows with a multiply layer which I then tweaked the opacity so I could get the right intensity.



This is a really rough example but I hope you understand what I mean. Always think about lighting

Always think about the lighting, got it! thanks. can i ask what settings are you using for your brush ? just shape dynamics and transparency ?



is this more on the lines on what you mean ?

StevenZer

He is trying to tell you that your highlights are working against light shading rules the highlight should be on the same side on all the lines but you have highlights on the left side in one side and right side on the other side of wood.
They all should be either left or right, don't do both.
And also if the light is coming from right side then the area of the metal in the left should be a little brighter than the other, because light is hitting it but not the other side.

Choppz

Yeah thats more like it Nesmos, but also remember things like the shadow your metal trim is making on the wood, same with the highlights on your metal.

On my brush all I have is transfer turned to pen pressure. I just then change brush opacity and layer opacity/fill when needed. I basically always stick to the default round, and also change the brush hardness depending on what I'm doing, but its good to experiment with your brush settings.