Perfecto - Texturing Challenge
 

Thread Started but it may be a week before I actually get started. I've got lots of reading and research to do on the subject. Don't even know how to do the UV map thingy yet (hehe).

One thing that I would do is try the different UV projections on a primitive object, say a 4x4x4 subdivided cube, this way you can get to grips with what each of them does, and then apply then to your model to whatever fits best.

Good Luck

I was helping out marlonjohn a bit, a short while ago; hope this helps:

http://forum.simplymaya.com/showthre...threadid=25674

Sever & gster, thanks a bunch. I was pretty clueless where to start, except to read F1 files. This should give me a great start. Hopefully I can make you regret helping me (hehe). I meant that in a good way.

Let the fun begin!

So long as you make me regret giving you that link, I won't regret giving you that link. :D

...wait a sec...:confused:

Just letting everyone know I havn't bailed out of the comp.

1. Reading up more on texturing
2. Learning a free photo software I downloaded (I don't have Photo Shop).
3. Finishing up another project.

I will still have a finished something or another by June 1st.

Edit: Thinking about doing either the weapon or Calamity Jane since nobody's doing either one.

Solid advice from the pro's above Perfecto. I learned more from UV mapping a simple cube than I did from 3 days of reading helpfiles hehe.

There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

Jokes aside, I've found it really helpful to work with a saved panel layout. UV/Persp. Splits the screen in half so you can both see the model and the UV map at the same time. I made a custom UV shelf and dragged Planar mapping options box, cylindrical options, spherical mapping options, and lastly Automatic mapping option box to this shelf. This way you can test a multitude of things and get a very visual feedback of the things happening to the UV's. Channel box visible also helps.

AlphaFlyte,
Thanks for the good advice, much appreciated. I learn best by visualization, either by seeing someone else do it (video tut) or by playing around with settings and visualize the outcome. I hate reading (yuck, yuck, yuck and more yuk). Some of my best learning experiences and you so hallariously put it (lol) has been peeing on the electric fence. Those learning experience you never forget (hehe).

I really like your saved panel layout suggestion and using a split screen.

Thanks a bunch,

P.S. I've seen a couple of your other posts. I don't how well you know Maya but you seem to be very artistic and with good knowledge. I'm sure many of us will learn alot from you over time. Also, glad you joined the challenge.

I am deffo more artistic than technical. I blew math in school for instance :D The lil bits I know on Maya I've picked up slowly over a couple years, on and off, from Michael McKinley and Kurt Boutilier here and some simplymaya oldtimers (Pony, 3DDemon, Santa, Danny Ngan, kbrown), and Maya Character Animation (cool book). Now, I'm not very good at either art or technicalities yet. I started very late in life with drawing and painting you know, and it's recreation.

Art is learning for life and I have done a lot of studying on the principles of art and design, but I have not done enough practicing it (nor studying it). I think I am in a observing state of mind. I do tons of observing, and learn very slowly. That's just me and I am accepting that.
I do try to sketch at least 2-3 days a week, and paint when I get some time off. I realized something important. If I can't draw, I can't paint, and my 2D will help my sculpting which in turn will help my 2D again. Everything relates. Music, sculpting, color, form, light, shadow mood, composition, anatomy, planes and so on. The foundation is the same, the medium of choice is different.

Now I am happy to share what I see or what I've studied, but it's easy to come across as I know more than someone else. That's not true. It's just an effective way to communicate.
I do firmly believe that, anyone can teach anyone something.
Anything else is just arrogance.

It's like with critique's, take it to your heart or dust if off with a disagreement, but anyone with a pair of eyes can spot things :)

AlphaFlyte - I like the bit about the 3 types of men, very good :)
I think most people want to learn by reading but never give it enough effort. That's why video tutorials are common nowadays, a kind of quick fix. And if that doesnt go in (or they are done badly) then you have to jump on in there and get electrocuted ;)

Si

I have begun
 

I just downloaded the raygun. I will start mapping the uv's tomorrow. I will start off slowly and build momentum toward the end (due to other ongoing projects).

im the one pissin on a fence:bandit:

cant wait to see your work perfecto i might join in this challenge too:beer:

Hi acid44,
Unfortunately, I havn't started till today. I've been really busy learning Maya and working on Maya projects (not posted anywhere). I've been learning how to work quickly and effeciently as well as learning tools and such. This is my first attempt at mapping UV's. I took me 4 hours to get this far. I still have some tweaking to do but will wait til tomorrow or Monday.

You should join in. Better late than never they say. You could do the gun like me or the cylinder thing as I think these two are probably the easiest which would be good since there's only about 10 days left. My goal is mainly to force myself to learn texturing. I always try to finish what I start. I've still got an arena to finish as well as pose and texture the Rodney Robot I did in the WIP section. This challenge will help me be able to finish those.

Anyway, glad to hear from you and hope to see you join in.

Had a little time tonight to do some more on the model. Here's an update. It only took about 45 minutes to texture the handles so I'm pretty confident that I'll have a decent looking model by the end of the month . . . in case anyone was having doubts that I'd finish (hehe).

I tried artRage but it's extremely limited and for this challenge seems pretty useless for most part. So I made the handle texture in Maya, saved it as a jpeg and then used it as a color and bump.

looks cool. :eek:

Nice padding! Man, you make me want to take a nap on it...

Thanks sandman300 and severinianthony,
I'm setting aside 2 hours to work it some more tonight. Man, I can't wait till I can afford PhotoShop. The free applications just don't seem to be able to do much. I'd like to make it look worn and used but I don't think that's going to be possible (with my lack of skills) until I can afford an advanced photo editor like PS.

You might give Gimp a try. I don't think it's quite at the level of Photoshop, but it's a very nice package for something that is free.

Thanks Dutch,
I posted a thread asking for some cheap generic PhotoShop software and somebody did recommend Gimp. When I checked it out, it seemed like the install was really complicated and was a little uneasy by it. Have you ever installed it before? If so, do you remember what it was like? Thanks

Here's a few more updates. Trying out color schemes and trying to get some ideas.

How I did my textures
 

For the green liquid, I made greenish white circles (hollow cylinders) in a green transparent cube. I added some glow and incandescence to get a decent glow look to it. Then when I applied the texture to the model, I added a ramp node to add a small glow to the top and bottom edges (although, it doesn't show in the small gun render above - I'll have to increase settings for small renders). I also made the liquid filled cylinders a little translucent with a point light inside (which also doesn't show up in the small render-hmm).

Looking really good!

For the handle texture, I made a poly square and then made the bottom wider. Then I beveled the edges and rotated 45 deg. Then duplicated them on a dark grey poly plane.

For the symbol, I just used the CV curve tool to create an elipse with my attempt at a anomalie type shape and a planet. I used the loft and planar tools. Again on a dark grey plane. Also for the red digital numbers on the side of the gun, I used the create text tool and added glow on a black background that has just a hint of red in it. I figured that the red glowing numbers should give the background a reddish tint.

mtmckinley: Thanks for the comment as I wasn't really sure if it was looking good or not.

Kudos for improvising 3D elements to create textures!

Any chance we (I :p ) could get a close-up of that green canister? :D

Sure severinianthony,
I'll post a close up later this evening. Fixing to head out to the park today to celebrate a birthday.

Looking good man, i'm a bit confused, is it geo or textures that you using?

Of are you rendering the geo that you've made and then applying them as texture to the model?

yeah - i'm a bit confused too!

this is looking really great Perfecto - good job mate! :beer:

Sorry about the confusion everyone. To make the textures, I've been using geometry to create the look that I want, then I render it out and save it as a jpeg. Then I applied the jpeg files as the textures.

I hope this is okay Mike? If not and you need to disqualify me, no hard feelings, I'll still complete the model. I just don't have a photo editing package that's capable of doing what I want. Don't get me wrong, they're good in other ways, in fact I just used artRage to create a simple design that someone saw and is now using for an album cover for a record they're producing. I'm going to give Gimp serious consideration but of course there's no time for this comp as the month is almost up.

Here's the close up of the green cylinder

Meh, I'd be surprised if it wasn't okay; as long as everything ends up a texture, then all is well and good :D

Remember, I did the same thing with the rings on the saddlecloth for Patches; create a high poly torus, give it a shiny material, and rendered it out in the top view. In the end, it's just a texture on a flat surface, but it sure beats trying to paint it by hand! Who in their right mind is going to try to paint a perfect circle?

Anyway, thanks for the close-up of the bubbley liquid; looks good :D

yeah I'm sure it will be fine perfecto - don't worry.

looks like you came up with a smart solution to not having a paint program and your ray gun is looking sweet.

Hey, thanks for the reassurance sever and arran. Here's another little update. I did the texture the same way, geometry then render out as jpeg.

Close up of strap texture

I decided that for the final, I will post a close up of the gun and another render of the gun on display. Here's the start of the display case.

Here's the maple wood texture that I created in MS Paint. I made it by using the small spray can. It's made with three colors, light brown, medium brown, and dark brown. The trickiest part was figuring out how to make the pattern repeatable.

Edit: There's actually four colors if you count the extra light brown which I used first as a fill color for the background. Then I started painting on top of it with the spray can.

OMG u did a texture in paint - that is freakin awesome.
at 1st glance i fort it was real or atleast made in photoshop.

hehe thnks 4 the msg perfecto at SL, its ok, i had been checkin here but i must of missed ur thread. i really like ur texturing and additional features to the gun. the handle and strap textures r lookin sweet. some nice ideas there.

WELL DONE, glad 2 see sum1 else attemptin the gun. :)

:attn: s2

Worked on lighting some.

I think I've done about all I can do. Adjust the lighting a little more and added a plaque.

Close-up of plaque.

And the texture. I also did this one in MS Paint. I just made a bunch of horizontal lines and then used the text tool. I used this texture as the color and as a bump.