NEED help with texture, (im newbie)
 

hello people, yes i have taken the leap of faith and i want to learn how to texture since i am new to it and would love to texture all my models i have created...

i have done some free easy tutorials but no success, it just dosnt work for me. can someone give me the easiers texture tutorials or even give me steps... also advice would be most welcome :)

Thanks, marlon

Im totally new too, and know nothing about UV mapping etc. I simply just played around with lots of blinn and lambert materials and settings to see what results I got. maybe iv just been lucky but iv managed to get some half decent renders from it so far.

tho i really should look into more detail. haha

best advice is jsut go out and play about with it!

enjoy

robin

Have you tried laying out the UV's for a simple, six-sided cube? It may be incredibly boring and basic, but it gives you the general idea behind UV layout. If you have a "complex" creation, I'm afraid there's no easy way to learn it other than to dive on in and take a stab at it, keeping in mind what you know from laying out UV's on a cube. I say "complex," because complex can be as simple as a 3,000 poly game-res character!

Applying a checker texture can help vastly when laying out UV's.

I'm off to browse for UV layout tuts...

@ rcb25 - "I simply just played around with lots of blinn and lambert materials and settings to see what results I got."

yeah thats what i usual do ;)

@ severinianthony - "Have you tried laying out the UV's for a simple, six-sided cube? It may be incredibly boring and basic, but it gives you the general idea behind UV layout"

yes i have tried to do something like that from one of my old maya 5 books which was just to lay out numbers on each side of a 6-sided box but no success, i struggle and that bad :S please help ... lol

marlon

Allrighty; my hunt for tuts failed, so I'll do my best to whip something up for you. ^_^

cool, thanks man... :)

For starters, I've attached a scene file with a (very basic) hand in it.

1) Open up your hypershade, and from the 2D textures section, middle-mouse-drag a checker into the work area

2) Select the hand, and right-click (hold) on the checker texture, and choose "Assign Texture's Material to Selection" (should be the top option)

The hand should now look something like this:

http://uglyassbaby.ytmnd.com/

Or pretty close...but don't worry; we'll fix that ^_^

For the sake of my demonstration, I'll stick with basic planar projections.

3) For now, ignore the fingers; we'll focus on the main body of the hand.

Using whatever method you like (drag select, click one at a time, paint selection), select the faces that make up the top side of the hand. Be sure to choose only the large faces; don't choose the narrow "knuckle" faces, we'll make those a part of the fingers.

4) Under the Modeling menu set (I'm using v 7.0), go to Polygon UVs -> Planar Mapping -> Options

A window, "Polygon Planar Projection Options," will open up.

All you care about in this window, for this demonstration, will be the "Mapping Direction;" there should be three little bubbles, one of which can only be active at one time. They are labeled X Axis, Y Axis and Z Axis.

Guess which one we want for the top of the hand?

That's right; Y it is ^_^

Go ahead and apply it.

Below is a before and after view of what you should have at this point (more or less)

are you sure i should start with a hand, im just a rookie at texturing :p but i will try yours :)

i would love to know how to put the numbers 1-6 on each side of a poly cube.. ived started now what do i do? what do i do in the uv texture editor now? or have a missed some steps...

heres a picture of my first minute progress,

http://img50.imageshack.us/img50/3786/32693484bc4.png

marlon

5) Go to Window -> UV Texture Editor...

This will open up your texture view.

6) Select the faces you just applied the Y-axis planar map to, and in the UV window, choose Select -> Convert Selection to UVs

7) Press "w" and move them somewhere out of the way of the rest of the hand.

While doing this, you should notice your checker texture "flow" over the model.

8) Scale your UV selection up a bit.

From here on, your main goal will be to keep a uniform checker look over the surface of your model by moving your UV's around in the UV window. Mind you, they don't have to be perfect squares, but the cleaner they are, the better. This is because when you export your UV map and paint a texture, any/all non-square sections refer to "stretching" of the texture, and WILL have that effect on your texture's appearance on your model.

That is, no matter how pretty a texture you paint, if you don't have clean UV's, your texture will look (more or less) like the the above link.

So again, you don't need absolute perfection, but the closer, the better ;)

I'll be working on this right now, so I'll post an image when I'm done.

Meh, my hand is pretty basic; there's no way you can mess this up. :p

I've honestly never used a number system before...the checker texture has pretty much always been my friend.

But you are able to use the number-method; the process should be the same. ;)

first update for part1 ... woooo im getting the hang of this, and i think from reading the other part2 and part3 i think i can do this now :p but i better not have my confidience to high ;)

cheers

http://img128.imageshack.us/img128/6088/32467755ew5.jpg

In my posted image, the top of the hand obviously isn't done, but it shows the idea.

The UV's that are closer to the fingers have been laid out, and you can see that I've tried to keep the 1x1 "checker" appearance.

Again, you don't have to use the checker texture; numbered boxes work perfectly fine. The idea remains the same; keep them uniform (looking like squares) as much as you can over an awkward surface.

There you go; nothing to it ^_^

Obviously, from here on, go about perfecting the square-ness of the checker texture, and do the rest of the hand.

When you choose faces, and go to apply the planar projection, make sure you choose the appropriate axis.

Top of the hand, top of the fingers, underside of the hand and the bottom of the fingers are on the Y axis. The thumb is at an angle, so the "sides" will be the Y axis.

The tips of the fingers X axis, yaddey-yaddey-yadda, etc etc etc...

You get it ^_^