Hi Stefan,
Thanks for that - in German [ I think ], my German not great. Spent time
with UV SETS and that and regular texturing - found that the UV Maps were a
little unpredictable. The Unwrap UV function doesn't seem to be up to much.
That is to Unwrap and then move into a paint app to texture, then back into
RS - that is my interpretation of Unwrap. Any advice or tips about RS in
this area - I would be delighted to hear.
There is also issues with UV SETS, UV and SDS in Smooth Mode, particularly
when you select the faces on your mesh and ALT DRAG the handle to harden
the edges. Now your UV and texture is all messed up. I realise this is a
bug in RS and that no external Unwrap app will solve it.
To try and texture a Smoothed SDS with SOME hard edges is impossible also
if you want to keep the mesh as one object:
http://www.tidalsound.com/3dstuff/sun_scene_ship4.jpg
I used UVSETS to do this. Notice between the yellow arrows you have an area
specified by the UVSET which is grey around the red strip. The red texture
should be covering these grey areas also. While discussing this recently at
the IRC I was reminded that if the mesh is a smoothed SDS the texture will
not follow the smoothing process. This mesh is a smooth SDS but the edges
are hardened with the Alt Drag option [ To Change Edge Roundings ] used on
each of the faces.
The bug - when you sharpen the edges extra faces are added during
interpolation and they don't inherit the materials.
Anyways, thanks for the link and mail,
Cheers
Aidan
At 00:08 03/02/2006, you wrote:
Hi RS3D´ler,
why use a onother prg ?
I think the UV tool in RS3D is very good. Look in this forum.
<http://www.3ddart.org/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=506>http://www.3ddart.org/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=506
Best regards
Stefan
Aidan O Driscoll schrieb:
Hi Guys,
After my big long rant mail - heres another one - this time not a rant,
but maybe very positive stuff.
As I said previously I THINK the core important elements of any 3D app is
solid MODELLING, TEXTURING and ANIMATION tools / features. One of these
things - TEXTURING - I think is most important - it gives life to the
mesh. To this end I went hunting for decent UV UNWrap apps. I found the
following called ULTIMATE UNWRAP 3D:
<http://www.unwrap3d.com>http://www.unwrap3d.com
The demo is at the Download page and is fully functional except for
export / save.
To get out of RS into this app, just export your mesh as an OBJ. The
basic operation when inside Unwrap is that one selects faces - say front
Torso then map them [ with tools ] to Unwraps UV Editor. The Unwrap work
area is divided up into the UV Editor on the left and a Perspective Model
View on the right. Once this is done move the torso map off to the side
of the UV Editor live area, do the same for the back torso faces, the
legs front, back etc. Once you have all your separate maps for all the
mesh parts done - organise them all inside the defined UV Editor 'Live'
space window. No overlaps. Its like a game of Tetris :)
This is then exported out as a BMP or JPG - whichever, then into your
Paint app - Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Gimp. Once here you can texture
the various parts differently, skin tones for the arms, blah blah. Once
this is done save it and then back into the UNWRAP app. Here one imports
the textured map file and applies it to the Mesh [ the original OBJ you
imported ]. A bit of tweaking to fix stretching and thats it. Now EXPORT
as an OBJ again WITH Materials.
Here is a screen shot of the UNWRAP app with my simple model inside and
the UV MAPs to the left:
<http://www.tidalsound.com/3dstuff/jan06/unwrap.jpg>http://www.tidalsound.com/3dstuff/jan06/unwrap.jpg
Now open RS - Load the OBJ File you created in Unwrap. Make sure UV
Coords as: is set to per face Materials in the load options window. Keep
in mind the INVERT V COORD option, more on that in the minute. Say OK.
Now select the mesh itself and then the WINDOW Menu, UV Editor option.
Nothing displayed. Right Click and at the end of the menu is the Mesh
Name, select this. Magically [ :) ] the UV Maps will appear, but hey, no
texture map under it. OK, have a look in your materials tab over left.
You will notice maybe two empty materials. Select the first one, double
click for properties, add a TEXTURE MAP Wizard and load the TEXTURE you
created in your paint app earlier. DO NOT APPLY THIS or MAP IT AS YOU
USUALLY WOULD. Just look, notice the texture is now applied to the mesh.
Open up your UV Editor once more - now you should see the texture under
the UV Map.
If the map is up-right and the texture upside down then this is where you
needed to have clicked the INVERT V COORD option when you loaded the
file. Dump the current file and just reload the OBJ into a new file with
INVERT V COORD option selected. Now you should be alright. Render it and
thats it.
While messing with UV-SETS I found a problem when applying textures to
SMOOTH as opposed to POLYGONAL meshes. With smooth - distortions
occurred. Apparently I am told that this is a bug in RS. The wisdom I got
was to separate all the components of the mesh - break off hands, legs,
torso etc - anything with a different texture and create your model out
of parts. This may not be satisfactory. I think one can avoid this with
the UNWRAP app. In this app just create SEPARATE UV MAP PARTS for each of
the mesh parts with different textures.
So - I would like to hear from others who might like to download this app
[ the demo - 1.5mb ] and try it. Unfortunately the demo does not have
export or save, but the rest works. To see what it is like to export and
move to RS here is a link to zipped file containing the OBJ Mesh, the MTL
Material File and the JPG TEXTURE. [ This texture may look a mess and
look basic, but it was only for experimentation]:
<http://www.tidalsound.com/3dstuff/jan06/Realsoft.zip>http://www.tidalsound.com/3dstuff/jan06/Realsoft.zip
To purchase the app - it will not break the bank: About $45. Yes - I
bought it!
Above - I have skimmed through the process. For a more comprehensive
version go here, very good one off tute:
<http://www.geocities.com/jhocking15213/unwrap/tutorial_char.html?20062>http://www.geocities.com/jhocking15213/unwrap/tutorial_char.html?20062
AN APPEAL TO THE RS MOTHERSHIP:
What would be nice is a NATIVE RS Import/Export plugin to / from this app
OR a UV app like it. I think it would be worth approving this app to work
with RS. It does one thing very good - UV - an important part of texturing.
Here is a list of apps already on board with import / export:
<http://www.unwrap3d.com/formats.aspx>http://www.unwrap3d.com/formats.aspx
Thanks for reading, least of all I hope it may have given an insight into
texture / UV mapping in 3D.
Feedback as always appreciated,
Cheers
Aidan
