How would you (perfectly) map a tiled texture to a tabletop in maya?

amcclay

Hey all. I'm curious if anybody has any tricks as to how they would go about mapping a tiling texture on an angular u-shaped tabletop (desk) shape.

I've been able to get close to my goal with the basic planar mapping built into maya, but what I really want is for the UVs to be perfectly unfolded onto the texture so I don't have to align every single UV shell individually.

So, basically, I'd like to take this shape, and have a tiling 16x16 texture repeat over the entire surface (sides and bottom also) and I'd like the shells to align perfectly.



Here you can see what I'm talking about, when attempting to apply this texture to the entire table with planar mapping, the sides (understandably) don't map properly:



Imagine that each colored square is a 16x16 tiling texture.

My question is, what would your personal method be (in maya) to make the tiles on the sides match up perfectly with the tiles on the top? I've tried several methods, but nothing seems to really be efficient.

Even if I create new shells for the sides, then I have to align them by hand, and there doesn't even seem to be a method to snap the shells for the sides (or the uv vertices) together perfectly with the top portion of the table uvs.

So, here you can see the side edge of the table top, I am just wondering if there is a way to sort of automatically align the shell for the side to the top without dragging the points around, and ideally make the top and side edges all one shell so I can scale / manipulate them without worrying about accidentally messing one part up.



I know this is a noob question, but any help is appreciated.

Thanks!

Marine

i would automatic map the table, cut the uvs for the side of the table, flip them horizontally or vertically depending on how maya decided to orient them, stitch them back on to the table, but not stitching the corners together.
looks like this

there's probably a better way though

kodde

Here's an idea. I chose to sacrifice low triangle count in order to use an optimized texture. I went with 16x16 texture since thats what you dropped. Bigger tiling texture resolution = less segments.



I started out with just 1 square plane, and then i just duplicated and used snapping like crazy. Then combine, extrude the sides (depth), lots of planar mapping for the new extruded faces, move and snap new UVs to top of texture. Voila. Took me about 10-15 minutes all in all.

Do you have specific case for this? What will it be used for? Are you going to apply some certain maps, techniques, animation, etc?

amcclay

First of all, you guys are just amazing to help me out like this. I've never been so glad to find a site as I am for having found polycount.

Ok, so I'm pretty sure I got it. Marine's suggestion worked perfectly, and for some reason I wasn't figuring out the usefulness of "sewing" on my own. In this case, "sew and move" was exactly what I needed.

Voila:



Perfection. Now I can just map my simple pixel-texture to it to get what I want and it will work perfectly.

Here is how the map came out (much like you guys said it would)



The only "flaw" if you can call it that is the fact that on these corners it doesn't wrap perfectly, but, if I'm not mistaken, it's simply not possible to have a material perfectly wrap around this whole multi-sided object, right?



Anyway, here is what I was trying to do all along - It's not exactly advanced texturing, but it was a problem I wanted to solve because I knew I would face it again going forward. Now, if I want to make the table top wood, or stainless steel, or whatever, the texture will map perfectly. I still need to do all the objects and the base.

thank you guys so much!

kodde

amcclay wrote: »

The only "flaw" if you can call it that is the fact that on these corners it doesn't wrap perfectly, but, if I'm not mistaken, it's simply not possible to have a material perfectly wrap around this whole multi-sided object, right?

No it's not. If you try this is what you are going to end up with.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDpGTXDQFgM]this is the result[/ame]

Note how trying to flatten a solid object does not result in a perfectly laid out UV map. You have to add them cuts or face getting a big sledgehammer right in your face like those poor orange in the video.

Japhir

kodde: ehm.. adding geometry that way is quite unnecessary... you could either just set the tiling of the texture higher or scale up the uv's a bit to make it tile anyhow.

kodde

Japhir wrote: »

kodde: ehm.. adding geometry that way is quite unnecessary... you could either just set the tiling of the texture higher or scale up the uv's a bit to make it tile anyhow.

Yes, probably. But it all depends on what other factors there are. Posting an example that covers every angle and every possible scenario without a given context is bound to have people go... "Hey didn't you know you can do it this way? Gosh!".

amcclay

kodde wrote: »

Yes, probably. But it all depends on what other factors there are. Posting an example that covers every angle and every possible scenario without a given context is bound to have people go... "Hey didn't you know you can do it this way? Gosh!".

Thanks Kodde. Your way would totally work, it's just (I forgot to mention) this object is for an iPhone 3D project and as such needs to be as low-poly as possible. Your help is much appreciated regardless

kodde

amcclay wrote: »

Thanks Kodde. Your way would totally work, it's just (I forgot to mention) this object is for an iPhone 3D project and as such needs to be as low-poly as possible. Your help is much appreciated regardless

Cool! iPhone projects make my curiosity meter go off the scale.

You could disable texture filtering as well as any render setting filtering to get a more "pixelish" styled render as you might see in many of the other threads with lowpoly art. This would be more representative to how it would look on an iPhone (I think?) since I am doubtful that the iPhone would have any texture filtering in real time. Using Hardware rendering would probably do the trick as well.

Texture filtering is located on your "File" node and in render setting (if using Maya Software) set Edge Anti Aliasing preset to Low Quality.

Best of luck.