Setting up 3dsMax for texturing

Walruz

Hi guys.

I'm trying to texture a griffin model I've done and I'm trying to do it in 3dsMax (2010). I'm having some troubles about how the texture is shown on the viewport. I've followed this post:

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1006675&postcount=14

I know that post talks about setting up 3dsMax for Low Poly Characters but it works for me since it the texture appears very detailed on the viewport. My problem is that the texture is too brighten up as you can see here:



In that screenshot the perspective view is set to [Smooth + Highlights]. The problem is that if I set it to [Flat] is that the texture turns into this:



So due to this problems I can't start skinning properly because one way the texture is too brigthen up and the other it's too undefined to skin. How do you guys set the viewport so you can texture?

I'm also open to use other modelling software. Any ideas?

uncle

In the material editor set 'show hardware map in viewport' instead of standard, that should fix the crappy resolution.

As for invalid texture color - I would try disabling gamma/LUT or setting gamma to 1.0.

Good luck

Walruz

I had 'show hardware map in viewport' already checked



Also I've put gamma/LUT to this (it was disabled before):



But still nothing . It's frustrating.

GeeDave

Little confused as to what your end goal is here, do you want flat shaded with AO/Shadows? Are you using Nitrous? Try this:



Just as an aside though, when I first enabled this mode... it automatically took off AO AND replaced my texture with a checker map... but a few more clicks and manually enabling AO again, it eventually behaved itself.

Edit
Hold up, does 2010 even have Nitrous? Apologies if the above is redundant.

Walruz

3dsMax 2010 doesn't have Nitrous. What I'm trying to do is to use the viewport in order to see how the skinning is looking on the model. I'm gonna try to explain it with this:



Maybe it's not possible and I'm looking for a chimera. If that's the case I'd like to know what software do you use when you texture your models, as I supose, you look how the texturing is going somehow.

Walruz

Ok I fixed it by setting "Views->Show Materials In Viewports As->Standard Display With Maps". It looks now how I want in both Flat and Smooth+Highlights.

Finally I can start with the skinning. Thanks for your help guys .

GeeDave

Not that it's relevant to the thread at all, but I think we have different uses for the term "skinning".

In 3ds Max (and I'm pretty sure Maya), skinning is what we use for skeletal deformations. ie... the "skin" of a character is effected by its bones.

Walruz

Ok, that's my bad. I come from a modding community where the common term for texturing was skinning. But it's true that skinning is attaching vertices to bones. Next time I'll use the standard concepts for each .

meshiah

This is probably a really good question that should have more docs, or wiki (ther may be, or maybe ill make one) there is a few ways to set up your work space but ill hit your issues specifically,

Gee Dave, skinning is what the community originally called texturing, quake "skins" were the common term for sharing the skin of the character, i like when people use the term, has nostalgia.

Walruz
in your first image when you first import your texture map you'll notice a spinner called "Blur:" turn this value all the way down,the value is at 1.0 by default (lame).

the brightness issue should be due to a check box called enable exposure control in the view port,it's in one of the view port settings dialogues.

also using Control+L will toggle default lights and scene lights, in case its something you accidentally hit, and have some weird lights in there.