Texturing Models

[Nick53]

Have been reading these posts on texturing units. I'm using Blender 2.46 to make units and have OM's BZ2.XSI exporter which works well, I can get coloured units but no textures. I REALLY want to be able to texture my units, What I'm stuck on is this whole idea of "UV wrapping"? (Is this right?). I don't have any "paint" tools but would like to get a good free download, any ideas? If someone could point me in the right direction about texturing and UV wrapping I would be very greatful!!

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Try Paint.net or GIMP both support some pretty cool painting tools. Download Truespace 7.6 and give the UV unwrap tool it supports to unwrap your models UV a try. It can import many popular 3d formats like X and 3DS. It has several unwrap options including the standard UV mapping tools as well. See my other post on Unwrapping verses UV mapping. BNG. PS: I think quite a few of us want to learn to make custom unit skins, but most of the tutorials cover using GMAX and 3d MAX, I don't think Blender is covered although I understand there are several tutorials on Blenders website. Once I figure out how to do it in TS I'll eventually post a tut myself.

[Nick53]

Cool, many thanks! A tut would be great!

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

MTS, made a cool suggestion about starting with a cool based texture and then basically enhancing it with more customization by the skin creator them self. I would imagine this could work quite well with prop textures like wood, plant leaves, rocks and other common terrain objects. TS, has a broad array of included premade textures that with some basic modification might just serve as a good starting point for such model skins. TS also supports adding multiple textures as layers over the base texture by modulating the opacity levels for blending several textures into one. I still need to explore this much more, but after using TS for a while it's sheer simplicity shines like a gem in the middle of a very complex 3d modeling desert landscape. BNG.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

My first feeble attempt at skining my viper scout using TS 7.6 to planar map, and paint with Paint.net. I mostly bucket filled, painted a few wavy lines set to 50% opacity with a simple tile reflection effect applied, and saved. TS, applies the texture as soon as you save the file. The other parts you see are nothing more then the material colors I applied in TS's material editor. I added one layer in Paint just in case anyone wondered.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Part of the problem I see with using any UV map is the distortion added when one paints over the thing, saves it and then when it's actually applied back on to the model how horrible the end results are. Is this typical of the difficulties a modeler can expect when trying to skin a model? I've gotten much better visual looking results just UV mapping objects piece by piece rather then mapping the entire model based off a standard UV map using a single texture map. I can see now how really little I personally understand about the UV mapping process; what you see isn't at all what you get until you actually put in to practice. There's just got be a more comprehend-able way to custom skin a model. What sounds a bit more doable is either taking a screen shot or actual rendering of the model complete with material colors and lighting effects to get a true 1:1 aspect ratio, paint that, save it, and then in the modeler tweak the UV lines to conform to the texture map rather then the other way around. Any thoughts would be appreciated by all of us on what else to try to get a handle on skinning models and props for BZII.

[Avatar]

I've already outlined my method, which is use a base UV (planar, cylindrical, spherical) and then 'fine tune' the troublesome spots individually.  I find this the best mix of efficiency/results...

You CAN carefully apply a planar map adjusted to align with each group of planar faces, and map them one cluster at a time, but this can make creating the initial texture more difficult and takes a boatload of time.

There are texturing tools that 'explode' the UVMap, making the faces show up their correct size and orientation, but I've never used one.  You can do the same thing yourself by separating the faces, mapping them, and then rejoining them.  I've seen a tutorial that did just that, separating the faces into clusters, mapping them, and assigning them groups for later mapping, but it just seems like SO much work for so little payback.

There's at least one package on the market that puts the object in front of you and gives you tools like paintbrush, spraycan, decal, etc..  You actually 'paint' the object in real time, generating the texture as you do so.  This is cool, very realistic, but I don't think I'd get very good results from it.

The ultimate end all method of generating a good texture is to make a very highly detailed model using real-world type textures for the materials, and then using it to take screenshots to create the texture from.  I've done this a few times and it works very well, even allowing you to shadow and highlight the texture realistically.  If only it didn't take so DARN much time to do this...  but then you also have a very high-poly model for use in movies or whenever games allow models with millions of polys...

In the end I envy artists like Lizard, who can not only make the object but a great texture for it also.  It's a skill I've yet to master. 

-Av-

[bigbadbogie]

In the end I envy artists like Lizard, who can not only make the object but a great texture for it also.  It's a skill I've yet to master. 

It has taken me years, but I finally believe that am starting to get better at texturing.



The QF mod is a perfect example of how not to texture units. I am very disappointed with that part of it.

If you want to learn to texture units well BNG, just keep trying until you start getting satisfactory results. It does take time though.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

It would be nice if everyone used the same tools for texture skinning, but realistically each of us has to use the tools currently in our modeling tool box. I sincerely appreciate the forum posts that have been posted to help other modelers get a handle on how to try different methods to get a resulting model skin. I almost hope that this topic gets stickied as a place where modders can post how to's on painting better model skins.

That said, I found a little trick that seems to work well for me. In TS 7.6 I resized the the UV editor window to the approximate dimensions of my model (the default view is very square). What I did was to make the window more or less rectangular (vertically in the case of my viper scout). Then, I linked to my external paint program and after loading it the resulting image was quite a bit closer in aspect then the default square output I was using before. The only parts that I actually texture mapped were the top and bottom of the model body itself (separated using the separate object tool in TS). Effectively creating 2 halves when viewed from the side of the model body. I deleted the 2 faces that were formed between the 2 halves and attached the 2 pieces in the hierarchy tree (drag and drop operation in the scene editor of TS).

Afterwords, each half was planar mapped and exported to Paint.net. I duplicated the image as a second layer and began painting on to the 2nd layer (leaving the 1st alone in case I screwed up the 2nd layer. I bucket filled to paint a base coat and used the line/curve tool to paint decorations over the base coat (movable points on the drawn line were manipulated to form symmetrical curve objects at key points along the base coat. Then after I was happy with the lined curves I went into the effects menu and applied a distortion called tile reflection (basically a diamond shape tile overlay. Then I saved the file and returned to TS and the skin was auto applied to the model part perfectly aligned on the model. I repeated this for the other half and then saved it as an X model file. I opened it in Notepad and removed a few extra characters that the X exporter adds but messes up things like hp's and other BZII controllable objects and saved the file again. Then I opened the file in Threed and saved it as an XSI file. The 2 texture files were exported along with the X file to my BZII addon/bngassets folder and the model was ready to be viewed and test in the BZII map editor. BNG. 

[Avatar]

Do your UV tools allow you to specify how to adjust the mapping you apply?  In Max you have the basic types (Face, Box, Planar, Cylindrical, Spherical) and then you have modifiers as to how to fit that type to the object (Fit, Region Fit, Bitmap Fit, Center,  Acquire, Normal Align, View Align).

I ask because you can use Bitmap Fit in Max to scale the mapping to match the bitmap.  Not always a big deal when using game textures, as most have to be powers of 2 and square, but it can help a lot when using odd textures, or when you want to make sure your mapping is proportional to the texture.

-Av-

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Sorry to take so long to reply, but sometimes strange stuff gets in the way to read some posts. In TS other then the normal UV map types stuff like face, texture rotation, scale are mostly done using a box that surrounds the selected area. The UV editor also allows stuff to be positioned by point, face, and edge selection. What I really found useful is mapping by individual faces as the normal mapping never really seems to look visually correct. Applying a basic cubic mapping works fairly well, but remapping single faces really lines things up very nicely afterwords especially on small planar surfaces like those seen on stuff like doorway openings and such.

I remember when I made some buildings for SW he mentioned that the textures he applied just wouldn't line up right, and neither of us had a clue why. Part of the problem had something to do with Threed and part with the model geometry as well I guess. I reset the rotation to 0 0 0, but the building in question was none the less positioned at something like a 45 degree angle in the modeling workspace. I suspect this is part of the problem. The other day I created a hollowed out building and had to face map many of the faces manually to get them to look right; especially the interior walls and such. I'm slowly grasping the whole purpose behind UV mapping, but it really requires a ton of work to get things to lineup and look right. BNG

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

This plant was planar mapped, resized in the UV editor and seperated for painting. One problem though, the other side of the leafs will end up the same color as the top of the leafs. One way I can seperate the other side is to face paint them different colors so that I can seperate them in the TS UV map tool.

[Nielk1]

In MAX I select the faces I am mapping before applying the base planar map.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

I can do the same with TS, and then select the mapping as well. Will this work for generating a single texture skin though; like those used for the original BZII textures? I guess that I'm trying to some how work towards something roughly equivalent via TS's UV mapping tools. I prefer something relatively simple for simpletons like myself. Paint.net, seems fairly easy to add new layer's and seems easier to use then GIMP.

Does anyone have any actual painting techniques to pass on? Getting a base UV map into a paint program is the easy part, but using the paint programs artistic tools is where I tend to draw a blank on what to do next? What I've done so far is duplicate the layer to leave the original layer alone for use as a guide, and then start actually painting stuff on the new layers. Does this sound like a logical starting point? I noticed that in Paint.net if you click more in the color wheel; it expands the panel so I can adjust stuff like the alpha transparency levels among other adjustments I don't quite comprehend yet. Posting some techniques would greatly be appreciated. BNG.   

[Nielk1]

When I edit the UV I move it off the main 'square'. I do this for all of them then select all mesh and UVW edit and have all the UV shapes ready to scale, move, rotate, and otherwise fit into the main 'square' of my texture.