practice, unfolding all kinds of shapes?

Mistara

was a couple years ago.  we were talking about uvmapping and how to unfold a cube,
the pins and seams business. 

and someone kindly explained how to mark the edges for cut where the box should unfold
the top flap opened on top, the bottom and rear unfolded basically like a T

and then we did arches.

a good day to practice unfolding all kinds of shapes?  (lotsa snow outside, brr)  

thanks !

 

3DAGE

HI Misty :)

Some objects are easier to deal with by uisng an existing "preset" UV mapping type,.

for a box or cube,. you can select Box mapping,. and then select from a couple of different "Layout" options. in the Operations tab, then you can export that layout as a template for texturing,. from the Display tab.

the same applies to sphere's and cylinders, they have UV presets with layout options.

otodomus

3DAGE said:

HI Misty :)

Some objects are easier to deal with by uisng an existing "preset" UV mapping type,.

for a box or cube,. you can select Box mapping,. and then select from a couple of different "Layout" options. in the Operations tab, then you can export that layout as a template for texturing,. from the Display tab.

the same applies to sphere's and cylinders, they have UV presets with layout options.

Hi there, how can I export that layout? And in what format it would be saved? PDF? JPEG?

 

Cheers!

Otto

 

3DAGE

HI Otto :)

The "Display" panel,. in the Vertex modeller / UV mapping,. you can choose the size (up to 4096), and then the format. JPG, BMP, PSD etc.

Once you hit the Export button,. you get a panel to select the "Size",. then a "Save" Window opens, where you select the image format, and give it a name

Hope it helps :)

 

Mistara

spheres and tauruses be trickier?

havent practiced anything yet, working on old west 

otodomus

3DAGE said:

HI Otto :)

The "Display" panel,. in the Vertex modeller / UV mapping,. you can choose the size (up to 4096), and then the format. JPG, BMP, PSD etc.

Once you hit the Export button,. you get a panel to select the "Size",. then a "Save" Window opens, where you select the image format, and give it a name

Hope it helps :)

Thank you, never tried before but I think it should be a very useful tool at the time to create UV textures, as you are creating them by using the primary shape.

3DAGE

Hi Misty :)

the Sphere has a preset UV mapping type,. a Taurus could be mapped several ways depending on what you need, you can select different area's (polygons) of a model, and define that area as a seperate shading domain,. and each shading domain can have a different UV mapping type.

There's also some UV mapping options in the Shader system which can be used to over-rule the models uv's with temporary shader uv's

 

Hi Otto

being able to create a UV (texturing template) is really handy :)

Most of the figure models in the Daz store have a downloadable texture template,. which is used to create textures in an image editor, like Photoshop or Paintshop pro, or the free GIMP

In Carrara,. if your model has several shading domains,. there's an option (in the display tab) to show only the selected Shading domain,. so you can create different UV templates for different shading domains,. EG: Head,.Torso, Limbs etc.

 

TangoAlpha

3DAGE said:

In Carrara,. if your model has several shading domains,. there's an option (in the display tab) to show only the selected Shading domain,. so you can create different UV templates for different shading domains,. EG: Head,.Torso, Limbs etc.

Unfortunately it's limited to one domain or all domains. You can't pick & choose. So if your UVs are anything like mine, you wind up with loads of single domain files that you have to combine in photoshop, just because you didn't want domain "lightbulb" included!

3DAGE

HI :)

if you look in the display tab, there's a little check box at the top for .. Shading domain list .... "Show all"

then the list of shading domains in the model,. should be displayed under that,

if you un-check "Show all". ..then click on any of the domains in the list,... it should display only the wireframe for that domain.,.. then you could export that as a template

you should also be able to adjust or have different layout types for each domain , although it's more commmon to have a consistent planer type of unwrap,

if you think of figures,. there are different domains with different unwrap layouts for head limbs etc.

See pics for clarity

.Base is box /front,. Top is box /top and middle is box /Cover all,. but this is dione purely as an example,.

normally you'd probably want a more consistent mapping, to simplify texture scale,. why make life more complex than it is already.

Mistara

found a peaceful zen state of mind in the vertex room lol.

the boolean idea of etching words kinda worked.  first uv effort was like crazy.

2nd effort, hollowed out the letters, deleted lotsa edges, carrara really doesnt mind ngons

 

otodomus

Hi Misty, is this last one the result you wanted to have? I haven't problems UV mapping a solid texture in a dense mesh or a ngon, the problem comes when you want to apply text or images to that, and not always happens, Carrara seems to adecuate the intrincate to the UV mapping process, but in certain occassions a mess is resulted to that mapping, is when I suggest trying to fix the geometry being quad.

Regards

Otto

 

Mistara

well, i wrote 'deputy' with the text primitive.  converted it to vertex.  took it into the wrench room. added a cube. aligned, then used a boolean operation to etch the text into the cube.

i tried following the manual for boolean subtraction, but it wasn't working.
it said to double-click one, shift-click the second, ctrl-alt-select a vert on the object i wanted to subtract from, then construct subtract. now matter i tried it didn't work that way.  ended up selecting the text, then activating boolean tool, there's a row of boolean icons appears, cant' remember which one did the trick, kept trying and ctrl-z until it worked.

there was so many verts around the letters, couldn't imagine how to make quads out of it.  

otodomus

MistyMist said:

well, i wrote 'deputy' with the text primitive.  converted it to vertex.  took it into the wrench room. added a cube. aligned, then used a boolean operation to etch the text into the cube.

i tried following the manual for boolean subtraction, but it wasn't working.
it said to double-click one, shift-click the second, ctrl-alt-select a vert on the object i wanted to subtract from, then construct subtract. now matter i tried it didn't work that way.  ended up selecting the text, then activating boolean tool, there's a row of boolean icons appears, cant' remember which one did the trick, kept trying and ctrl-z until it worked.

there was so many verts around the letters, couldn't imagine how to make quads out of it.  

What I do is to Untriangle the model, that reduces significantly the amount of the vertices, and then I do the fix manually. 

A question: Do you want that the inside letters have a different texture than the rest of the model? Or the same?

Otto

 

Mistara

i put 2 bulb lights inside the cube, tinted red, that's the red showing in the render.  used one of the basic metal shaders for the walls.

  should test if text primitime with a wave modifier, converted to vertex, will keep the modified shape?

Mistara

experiments with the sphere presets so far.

Mistara

experimenting with the pins and seams.  >.< no idea what i'm doing lol

Mistara

how do they map those sky domes?   

relaxing uvs prolly end up with texture stretching?

 

bus is coming in soon.  

Mistara

oh dear

TangoAlpha

I think skydomes are usually mapped like unrolled cylinders, with the top and bottom pinched to a point -- like your third sphere example. If you look at some skydome images, you'll see the top and bottom looks really stretched out. That's because the mapping draws those pixels really close together. There is still some distortion when you look at the sphere, but generally you don't render looking straight up or down, so it isn't noticeable.

Pins are useful when a UV unwrap scrunches or distorts the end result. Look ay your "Deputy" cube. Try putting pins around some of the letters and then unwrap it . . .

Diomede

If you are happy with the boolean result, great.  But two other ways that might be simpler are to use an editing program like PS to write "Deputy" and save the texture map.  Then put that texture map in (1) the terrain modeler as a heightmap with no other filters (unless you want one), or (2) the displacement channel of the shader tree for a vertex model with plenty of polygons.  For the vertex model shader tree, I just used projection mapping : flat mapping : top side.  So I didn't even have to uvmap.

Roygee

Sphere's are difficult to unwrap well - here is a simple cheat that will give an almost perfect unwrap - good enough for skydomes and mapping the Earth.  Delete the two pole verts, loop-select around the holes and scale so that they almost touch, leaving a tiny hole.  Move the slightly out to maintain the spherical shape.  Do a simple spherical unwrap - choose which axis gives the right result.

Mistara

Roygee said:

Sphere's are difficult to unwrap well - here is a simple cheat that will give an almost perfect unwrap - good enough for skydomes and mapping the Earth.  Delete the two pole verts, loop-select around the holes and scale so that they almost touch, leaving a tiny hole.  Move the slightly out to maintain the spherical shape.  Do a simple spherical unwrap - choose which axis gives the right result.

that looks the awesome   can't wait to try it  

Mistara

when you insert vertex in the wrench room, how do you make it automatically go to the center?

when i try to send sphere to bottom drawing plane, with all selected, it flattens on the floor,

if i select one face and send to bottom drawing plane, only the face moves.

 

thanks 

TangoAlpha

I just set the z value to zero in the coordinates box (or 2.5 if it's a 5ft sphere and I want it resting on the ground. Generally though, I'll zero it out, so that in the assembly room the pivot point is in the middle). 

Mistara

seems the only way.  wasn't sure if i was missing out on a workflow shortcut. (doh). 

extracted an edge to move it close to the polar vert. deleted the vert.  i looped the edge,
couldn't figure out how to shrink the ring, ended up typing in a scale value for x and y axis

i exported the sphere as an obj to get the baked procedural. the one with the color squares,
and for fun, going to use uvmapper classic to make a uv map to compare.

do procedurals ignore uv mapping?  not sure how to test. 

 lessee

Mistara

#1,2 the procedural on the vertex sphere,

#3,#4 and then 2 with the procedural on the exported, imported obj shuffled to uv mapper classic.

Mistara

doesn't seem a difference between the procedural and baked jpg version.

tried a different procedural.

Mistara

found this generic tutt for spheres.  http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?p=2146032

the topology is different, if i'm using topology correctly.

says doesn't work with geospheres.  geosphere sounds interesting.

 

huhh? this says to start with a cube and keep smoothing it  http://polycount.com/discussion/115876/how-to-create-a-perfect-geosphere-in-maya

?  http://unwrap3d.com/u3d/tutorial_unfold.aspx

 

otodomus

Hi Misty! I think that your bet is on the Quad and SubD, I did a quick test:

 

First off your Sphere must be quad at the top, then what you need is to SubD the sphere, sorry guys, at this intent the best is the SubD to 3.

here the mesh:

And here the render:

I know that needs some adjustments but is close of be well mapped.

Cheers!

Otto

otodomus

I can't get that the texture do wrap the sphere, this is the closest I could get:

otodomus

The last row at the top, was a bit stretched, I did a little adjustment to it: