n88tr's basic textured things
I have been working on getting my uvs right [that's most of the battle for me] and then actually making my textures look decent. I've struggled and continue to struggle with it but am making progress I think. As long as it's not a mistake it's progress, right? lol
I cannot post imgs right this second but I will soon. Am working on some vegetation items, flowers, vines etc.
I will want crits on texturing, uv stuff etc so be ready haha.
I just wanted to have this thread ready for when I start posting stuff.
I cannot post imgs right this second but I will soon. Am working on some vegetation items, flowers, vines etc.
I will want crits on texturing, uv stuff etc so be ready haha.
I just wanted to have this thread ready for when I start posting stuff.
Replies
By the way I've been working on texturing simple objects. Like yesterday I modeled a simple sunflower plant, uv'ed it an textured the stem and the bud. I will finish the petals today but I like how it's coming along so far. I am doing various props and vegetation for a mod. I posted this info to them to keep them updated and I got this response,
"If you model a flower, you shouldn't put it in game, I would instead suggest you render off pictures of it at two or three angles, paste the resultant images onto flat planes, and then put that in game, it's a very efficient method of doing massed foliage, and the more angles you get the better it looks. It's also ideal for use with the detail prop system which can place masses of them on displacement surfaces."
How would I accomplish such a task? I can imagine the rendering and getting images and then creating planes with a material which is that rendered image but what about all the rest of the image, how would I make it transparent so only the flower is the visible part of the material? Or is that the wrong way to go about it?
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A little texturing I just started. I want to lay out the basic colors first and then go in for detail work.
Gonna review some of my PS texturing links in the mean time.
Here, I've hilighted just a few obvious sections
If you do overlay UVs, you will run in to issues if you choose to bake any textures. The immediate fix is deleting those faces (or removing UV data) just for the bake.
The two main benefits are MORE pixels to work with, and LESS things to texture (though texturing over a larger set of pixel, both of which make things look better)
For doing foliage that is one way you can do it. To make the material have transparency you'll need an alpha mask or an opacity mask it depends on what the shaders in the game engine support. In the engines i've used you can have a alpha mask in the alpha channel of the diffuse/color texture. Usually you can render and alpha mask from your 3d program. You'll probably also want to have a polygon facing in each direction so probably twice as many as you'd normally expect because it's normally easier on the game engine than rendering a polygon double sided.
What cholden is saying is that you have symetrical UV shells on your layout that could be overlapped and scaled up for better resolution unless you plan on putting unique details in those areas. You'll notice when you begin to add detail to the texture where the uv shells aren't very large that the detail may come up pixelated/blocky or blurry. If you've given adequate texture space to a uv shell and still have blurry results you can try the Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask to try to sharpen it up.
(lol cholden detailed it before i posted damn me and my slow writing, sorry for the mistake bumper)
I agree with bumper too you could clean up the model and get the same shapes and details with less subdivisions.
Hope that helps with some of your questions. Best of luck.
My point was a long the lines of the judicious use of polygons. The orange parts have unnecessary subdivisions. While there is some curvature, I don't think it's enough to justify the extra subdivision.
I also agree that you're using too many polygons on the orange elements.
With the overlay idea is that just taking two identical pieces and laying them on top of each other so they match up, is that how I'd do it? If it save me texture time I'll all for it.
Made a little more "progress" on this thing
I'm seeing how a cleaner mesh would've helped some....I didn't think I'd learn about my model by texuring it, that seemed counter-intuitive to me at the time but actually I'm seeing both sides of the coin.
So many things to fix, I feel a migraine coming on. Time for a break.
Yeah the ovelaying symetrical parts of your UV maps will save you time thats exactly how you do it, it's that simple. It will save you time and is common to do when UV mapping.
I belive you could re-do the orange elements of the gun in a more effeicient manner with less polygons and still acheive the same silhouette but it's up to you really. This is all part of the learning process. Taking a break and letting it sink in is a good idea.
Full http://cahemdue.net/images/con_turr1text_th.jpg
Full http://cahemdue.net/images/BL-InspiredTurretThrowable_1.png
Full http://cahemdue.net/images/BL-InspiredTurretThrowable_2.png
Working on uv and texture. Should be pretty cool when done.
Update: I overlayed everything that looked similar. Big mistake when it came time to texture. Redoing UVs atm.
Well...instead of manually overlaying them, just duplicate the sides/pieces that will be overlayed so they are perfectly matched on top of each other.
-If you UV map those as separate islands, then you can overlay the opposite faces on top.
-If you know the bottom face will never be seen, you could scale the UV down and squeeze it into empty space or overlay it on top of any of the others because it will never be visible.
Gonna re-uv the turret thing after the gym tonight.
turret gun
shield outer border
shield inner border
then I started to texture the inner border and my texture wasn't looking right in maya when I applied it as a material so I was like "WTF?" for 30 mins. I found out that my uv had to be displayed in the uv texture editor properly [I'm running a layout with two stacked windows. one has perspective and the other the uv editor]. It wasn't because that wasn't the last one I took a uv snapshot of. A dumb mistake I guess but I have a "mistake limit" before I get so pissed I just want to scream [not that I'm that kind of person, I'm very quiet sort of guy].
So there were a couple of mistakes and then I forgot about using layer masks while texturing in PS my turret so I decided to work on a texturing tut I found. Basic use of layers, painting, smudging etc. I couldn't follow that so now I'm just tired of being so angry.
Tomorrow or the day after I'll pick this up. I don't know anymore.
I thought about what I had done for my re-uv, the 3 map idea and realized that wouldn't work because I need the uv in the editor [split windows] for it to properly appear on the model as a material. If I'm working with 3 uvs, I have to constantly switch the right uv into the editor and in the end even if I get all the textures done, it won't look right because I can only have 1 uv map in the editor at one time so in the end I have to have all 3 maps combined into one so I'm gonna have to figure out why my uvs stretch in the editor when I try to just select verts.
I'll give it another go and if it still happens I'll post a pic and see if that rings any bells.
Thank you for you help guys. I've made good progress but at every turn I F up so I still have a long way to go.
I'm having uv issues for the most part. It's a hurdle ok?
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Starting to work on a simple project for texturing but when I select part of my uvs [to better organize them and optimize blank space] the whole uv map seems to be selected. How can I make this not happen?
I THINK i need to go to basics before I make some super fancy turret thing so I'll put that on hold like I always do.
Working on a simple sci-fi pistol thing. Started to texture just now. gym time but i will return to work on it more. crits always welcome and encouraged
Gonna work on the slide next, it needs some basic shapes.
Texture shown at half size. I was having tons of trouble moving my uvs around, so they're stacked like that because I couldn't figure out how to move them around without stretching. It's a long story...
I'm taking this as a learning experience as well. My texture are horrible I know but I need to start somewhere and work my way up. I'm liking the process and the little changes I see here and there.
you said low poly so I'll critique that some.
your shapes are looking good but got extra polys.
I'd get rid of all the polys where the red lines are, and the rest should look kindof like the blue tris. Basically cut anything that doesn't add to silohette.
The rear sight probably only needs 4 polys, not 8 as the shape is minimal.
try to get those small details in tex.
Also, on your uv you have alot of small seperate polys. In game this adds extra verts to each seam. So join them (I don't know Maya, but in Max you select a vert and it'll show you the verts that are 'attached' highlighted in blue.)
also easier to tex that way. Of course the sights will probably be seperate (they should be floated geometry).
In Max you can add an 'optimize' modifier. That will break down the extra polys for you (it also screws up UV's). But when starting out on low poly it's a good tool to use and see how many polys you can drop and still retain tthe basic shape. once you get more profiecient you'll see it without the optimize step.
I'd highly recommend doing proper optimizations by removing edges, verticies and welding pieces together.
It's sort of late for me to change geometry now that I'm texturing it, but thanks.
Also, removing the red lines at the end of the gun would create a huge n-gon, yes? Or did I miss something?
So I figured I'd mention it so you could look for those tools, that's all.
Removing those edges (with optimize) would probably damage the uv but it would be an easy fix.
However Maya should have an equivelant tool to Max's edit poly. In which you can select verts in the middle rows (red lines) and hit a remove button to remove them, uv intact, so it's not too late to remove if you wanted.
I don't know how Maya deals with Ngons, or what you think the problem would be, but I see no reason you couldn't take those rows out and keep the back of it basically like it is.
I was suggesting it for two reasons.
1-easier to uv and unwrap with fewer polys. (even if next model, not this one)
2-you said something about low poly and the point of low poly is to remove all uneeded tris. Removing those two rows could save around 36 tris alone which is pretty big considering how small an object it is.
Gonna just try to wrap up texturing this and move on to other projects that give me more geo to texture and thus a nice model in the end. This model is basically flat on either side with no chamfer or bevel.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1251384#post1251384
Some more details I need for high poly then I'll strip it down.
I have a question:
I bake the high on to the low, and then unwrap the low with the normal right? If so, does the uv map look different because it has the normal map applied to it or no? I would be hoping yes because that would help me texture more.
Thanks for all your help guys.