Aidan O Driscoll wrote:
Hi George,
"But since RS 5 I prefer to use overlapping UV sets within RS and
avoid all the exporting/importing business."
Overlapping UV sets????? Explain .... :-D
It was a tip on 3ddart forum but I can't find the thread. Any SDS face
can belong to many UV sets. So when you have adjacent UV sets you make
the faces where they join belong to both sets (for example where an arm
meets a shoulder). Then in your paint program you'll be painting twice
on that group of faces that belong to both UV sets, so you can fade one
texture out and the other in to make a smooth seam. This works well for
skin-like textures where adjacent uv sets have nearly identical
textures. I haven't tried it for spaceships or other objects that
require more precision.
Seeming you have ULTIMATE UNWRAP 3D - you know what I mean about the
way it works AND that you can create this UV Map Picture that looks
like a Mosaic, to export into a paint prog for texturing. Have you
found this possible from within RS - if so HOW? I suspect that this is
what the UV Unwrap tool to do with UV Sets is about - maybe wrong -
but I could not get that tool to do anything.
I've been making a mosaic manually in a paint program by importing
screen captures of the uv sets and moving theme to fit a page or image.
Then that composite image is used as the backdrop to the uv editor in
Realsoft and the uv sets scaled and moved to fit. It's not very
accurate though, as you noted.
ULTIMATE UNWRAP 3D - Flattens the faces to 2D surface, exports as a 2D
Bmp, Jpg ... whatever, into paint prog, texture the various flat face
groups representing different parts of the 3D mesh, save file, import
back into ULTIMATE UNWRAP 3D, apply to 3D Mesh, export mesh and UV
with new texture to 3D App of Choice. Is it possible to bypass
ULTIMATE UNWRAP 3D and go from RS to Paint app to RS, from what you
are saying above this maybe possible. Info appreciated.
It depends on how you work. Ultimate u3d is brilliant and if I were
doing nothing but texturing uv sets I'd probably use it more. I've
tended not to as SDS objects become very complicated and you must (I
presume) lose information on exporting and importing - like mapping,
vertex information, etc etc. If you can get your texturing right before
you do anything else then it might work for you.
The reason I did a big mail on ULTIMATE UNWRAP 3D - was more for
relative RS / 3D novices like myself [ using 3D for a few years but
still consider myself a 3d Infant ] - so any simple info / tutes etc
on this area or others - again much appreciated.
I'm just a baby myself - nay a foetus.
Stay at it :-)
Geo
I still think we are at a slight disadvantage though where UV Sets and
Texture Mapping is concerned when this Flaw to do with Smooth SDS
surfaces and texturing still exists - and apparently has existed for
quiet a while through version updates without being fixed. By this I
mean - create a cube in smooth mode, extrude the top face so you have
a double cube, texture the bottom faces [ orig cube ] with one texture
and the extruded faces with another texture. Render - all is fine. Now
select all faces and ALT drag the Face Handle to sharpen the faces /
face edges. Now Render again - not so pretty now. In one mesh You
cannot have hard and soft edges together it seems.
The bug - when you sharpen the edges extra faces are added during
interpolation and they don't inherit the materials.
"I've been collating my notes into a wiki"
This is great news - believe it or not I am considering something like
this. I have domain space at www.tidalsound.com and may add SQL
support to this - at a small cost - so we'll see. BUT hats off to you
for this.
Cheers
Aidan
At 08:26 03/02/2006, you wrote:
Aidan O Driscoll wrote:
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:
I have ultimate unwrap and it's a fabulous and fast program. But
since RS 5 I prefer to use overlapping UV sets within RS and avoid
all the exporting/importing business.
George
