Need a UV Mapping tutorial...

[Kelley]

Can someone point me to a good UV Mapping tutorial? Thanks.

[youngman]

Fuchur has a pretty good on on his site.

 

Tank Texturing

 

Jay

[Kelley]

Fuchur has a pretty good one on his site.

 

I followed the link, but I'm not seeing anything UV related.

[Rodney]

Kelly,

Sometimes there is a little confusion in terminology to contend with regarding texturing.

 

I see a tutorial on decaling on Fuchur's site that mostly deals with Decaling. Its 250MB so I don't suggest downloading it just to see if it might contain something on UV Editing. If Fuchur doesn't comment I'll investigate as I've got the file downloaded and can check it out.

 

Perhaps you mean something more along the lines of Editing Decals by moving assigned points around?

 

The classic tutorial on A:M's UV editor (Will Sutton's Balrog) isn't online any more but it's straightforward enough to explore: Locate either a Decal or a Stamp Image, Right Click and select Edit. From there you can move the UV specific CPs around, rotate them, scale them... arrange them as you see fit.

 

What's the easiest way to explore? (Its not a tutorial)

I'd suggest finding a model with a decent decal already applied, open it and edit in A:M.

Start with a simple model and then move to more complex decals.

Apply a decal to simple shapes and keep your early tests simple.

Post your results here and others will join in.

 

Now if you are looking for a Decaling tutorial... there are quite a few discussions on that around here.

[Kelley]

From there you can move the UV specific CPs around, rotate them, scale them... arrange them as you see fit.

 

Rodney:

 

I'll dig into Fuchur's site again. I may well have missed it.

It is UV help I'm needing, not just Decaling. As you can see from the picture, I need to map hair on a [Woodschunkle] face. I considered using the Hair Function, but that slags the rendering time unmercifully. I've yet to use the Fur, but suspect it's much the same. Also, the Hair would require hours of grooming to make it lie correctly. So I settled on UV Mappping with a Bump Map under.

I'm not following your advice on the CP's. How to move, scale, etc., without deforming the mesh.

[Rodney]

I'm not following your advice on the CP's. How to move, scale, etc., without deforming the mesh.

 

Thats the whole UV part. The CPs I'm talking about aren't part of the mesh.

They are representatives of the mesh in Animation:Master's UV Editor.

 

It's easy to see what I'm talking about if you right click on a decal/decal stamp and select Edit. The Points you move only adjust the layout of the mesh on the decal. The original mesh remains the same.

 

If you just want some basic velvet type fur you may want to investigate the fur material on Keekat. Probably not what you want but perhaps a starting place.

 

Note: Fuchur's tutorial has information on basic decaling but doesn't go into using the UV Editor.

[Caroline]

I'm not following your advice on the CP's. How to move, scale, etc., without deforming the mesh.

 

You get to the UV Editor after you have applied your decal like this:

 

 

You can then move the CPs around on the decal and fit the decal better.

 

I did a quickie here: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=32752

 

You create groups, then hide all but one group. Then flatten the group in an action and apply the decal. Then go into the UV editor as in the picture and move the points around. I found it helped using a chequered background, and then substituting the proper image when finished.

[Kelley]

Thanks Caroline, for your posting. [and thanks johnl3D for putting it in .pdf format] From the enthusiastic responses that I'm seeing, this is definitely the way to go! I thank you. The Woods Chunkles thank you!

[Fuchur]

My tutorial is quite basic here. It is not much about flattening and using the UV-editor, etc. but mostly about decaling.

 

Anyway: A:M doesnt have a good UV-editor... it lags many things, because A:M is more about decals itself, not about UV-editing afterwards.

(For example: The UV-editor doesnt even offer the possibilitie to select several CPs with the shift-key / alt-key. It can't disconnect whole patches by selecting a whole patch and move it away, etc... however it can disconnect CPs from other CPs by pressing the CTRL-key...)

 

The UV-editor is useable, but could be improved...

 

The better way is to use an action, flatten (I prefer to flatten by hand, not with the flatten-function) the model and apply the texture.

That's the way to go.

 

A:M isnt about using a basic mapping and than splitting and realigning the parts in the UV-editor. It is about decals/stamps.

Even if you want to use an UV-technique, it will still be decal-based!

 

However for mechanical models this is often not necessary. But it is for organic once!

*Fuchur*

 

PS: The tutorials on my site are quite large, but today it shouldnt be a bigger problem for most broadband-users (ADSL, etc.). It just wanted a nice quality and not the usual "300px x 300px"-badquality-mini-tutorial.

[mtpeak2]

Kel, with the talent you have with drawing, maybe 3D Painter could be an option.

[Kelley]

Kel, with the talent you have with drawing, maybe 3D Painter could be an option.

Good thought. I bought a copy some time back, but have yet to open it up and play around with it. I'll give it a shot.

[Fuchur]

Kel, with the talent you have with drawing, maybe 3D Painter could be an option.

Good thought. I bought a copy some time back, but have yet to open it up and play around with it. I'll give it a shot.

 

You will nevertheless have to do the UVs first... Automatic UVs are okay, but not perfect...

 

*Fuchur*

[jirard]

Is there anyway that someone may have access to Will Suttons tutorial?

[Kelley]

I lurch forward, step by halting step. I can only get the Flatten Command to work if I'm in Muscle Mode...and point not stressed so far. I asume that's the way to go. However, when applying the grid as a Decal, I can only access the 'Add Image' Command if all the CP's are selected, and when they are, then the whole grid gets applied to each patch. Any thoughts on how to get around this? Thanks.

[Caroline]

1. In the Modelling window, hide the cps you don't want to decal - before doing the decalling, create different groups with different colours, so it is easy to select and differentiate the different decalling areas.

2. Create a new action, and Flatten in muscle mode.

3. With the action window open in front of you, right click THE MODEL's name (not the action) in the PWS, and choose New > Decal.

4. Apply the decal.

[graphicguru]

Itsjustme showed me a real good TUT (by Jim Talbot) on UV maping and decaling:

http://members.cox.net/jtalbotski/tutes.html

[Rodney]

1. In the Modelling window, hide the cps you don't want to decal - before doing the decalling, create different groups with different colours, so it is easy to select and differentiate the different decalling areas.

2. Create a new action, and Flatten in muscle mode.

3. With the action window open in front of you, right click THE MODEL's name (not the action) in the PWS, and choose New > Decal.

4. Apply the decal.

 

3. With the action window open in front of you, right click THE MODEL's name (not the action) in the PWS, and choose New > Decal.

 

I think this is a footstomping opportunity.

This is the place where most people go wrong.

 

[stomp] [stomp]

 

If there was an A:M test... this'd be a good question to ask on it.

[zandoriastudios]

My tutorials are online again (yay!) on my blog. Here is the link to the UV tutorial:

http://zandoria.wordpress.com/tutorials/uv-tutorial/

[UNGLAUBLICHUSA]

Will's Tutorial is the Cats Ass. It helped me immensly. I give it 3 thumbs up. Eek! Looks like I've become a mutant.

[pixelplucker]

Is there anyway that someone may have access to Will Suttons tutorial?

 

 

Think he is re-doing his site http://www.zandoria.com/

I couldn't find anything but a printout I made from one of his tutorials. You may want to email him since his tuts are super easy to follow.

 

I have been using a traditional color grid as my base image I make copies of for various channels (diffuse, bump, transparency etc.). I then select the patches I wish to decal and in an action window I flatten out regions I need to keep uniform and apply my decals. From that I pop the file over to 3d painter.

If you have done any traditional uv mapping in other programs, the decals would be similar to uv islands and can be moved around over your texture space.

[Rodney]

It's great to see your site live again Will!

 

 

Pixelplucker,

Don't miss the link Will posted. His tutorials are there:

http://zandoria.wordpress.com/tutorials/uv-tutorial/