UVing/Baking Question

UNCCheezy

Ok, Here is my situation.

I have to model a building with only one 1024x1024 diffuse texture.

I understand polygon modeling/uving. In the past I have textured buildings, but I have used multiple texture files. I'm trying to figure out what the best way to do this is, but have yet to figure it out.

I was looking into texturing with multiple maps, then baking them into one, but it seems like the way I'm doing it isn't going to work (because my uv's are outside of the 0-1 range.) And even this seems like I'm trying to use the tool to do something it's not intended for. I don't really care about lighting, I just want it to convert all my files into one. (is this even possible?)

I've looked online for a while trying to find a solution or video, but I don't see much. I know I'm going about this wrong, but any help or links would be great. Thanks.

Sage

check this out.

http://chrisholden.net/tutor/

If you are using just one texture you'll need to model so can reuse parts of the texture sheet. There should be a thread here about environment modeling

UNCCheezy

I think the link you are talking about is http://chrisholden.net/tutor/max_tiling00.jpg

That is what I'm talking about. I don't understand how to do it in Maya though. Is there even a way to do it in maya? (tiling a small portion of a larger texture atlas?)

Noors

ofc you can. But you have to make subdivisions in your mesh, so you can seperate and overlap all your similar uv elements on your texture.
Basicaly, you just model one reapeated part of the building, let's say, a window, with a bit of wall around, unwrap it, then duplicate it to make the all building.

UNCCheezy

I understand what you are saying, but I don't think that's the question I'm asking.

Ok here's is a test case of what I'm talking about. In one case, the UV coords go out of the 0-1 space, using the texture to tile. In the other case, the UV coords stay in the 0-1 range. If I make a 1024x1024 texture to hold all the textures in my object can those individual textures be tileable?

UNCCheezy

Ok. I think I get what you're saying. Use a tillable texture, but in the case of a wall or something, instead of just using one quad use 4 or 8 quads. I think I get it. Thanks.

UNCCheezy

Ok. There's really got to be a better way to do this. Does anyone know of a video that shows you how to map in maya using the method described? I'm doing it, but I gota be doing something wrong. It's taking forever.

Piflik

What do you mean it's taking forever...that house has about 8 Quads to unwrap...just stack the Walls in the lower half of the UV Space (if you need more tiling, cut them up) and the roof to the top half of the UV Space, then use PS to put the two textures your using at the corresponding places on one single image...done. Shouldn't take much more than 15min...and that's counting the time the programs need to start up...

UNCCheezy

Ok. I figured out my main problem (my fault...set 3 hotkeys to pos,rot,scale, and didn't realize every time I hit the pos hotkey, I was also snapping to grid as well. This in turn screwed up my uv transformation.)

So after I layout my UV's, I just UV snapshot it, then paste images into the UV positions in photoshop.

Question: for tweaking the UV's should I change the UV position in Maya or Edit the texture in Photoshop?