Problem solved. I just converted the nurbs surface into a polygon.

Still not sure why the nurbs texture renders differently then it shows up in the gui.

I also evened out all the uv maps as best as I could.

Okay ready to go on to texture painting. Trying to decide if I should copy Jay's version or come up with a new paint scheme for the body.

Oh and I'd just like to say uv layout is PAINFUL! I spent pretty close to 20 hours over the course of 3 days to get to this point (although I did keep taking sidetracks to add detail to the cockpit).

This model only has a couple hundred parts I cannot imagine how anyone can do the uv layout on those models with thousands of parts! You could spend a lifetime and only complete a single model!

Yeah looks good, and yes I did layout uvs for everything! took me a while to do it too.

With regard to nurbs uvs: the surface and uvs work in unison with one another, the uvs are merely following the surface as it deforms, polys work slightly different,

Do a different paint scheme, I just did the battered up look as its what I like to see, the 'used' look. try something perhaps in the style of Formula 1 racing, nice, clean and shiny....



Jay

Thanks a lot Jay. I am trying to document as much of the process as possible. So far all is going well. I have always had problems with laying out uv's but I am starting to find patterns and so the process is speeding up.

I am also a fan of the worn look. I used to build model airplanes in my youth and I really enjoyed painting and weathering them up.

I was looking at the intake on this model and thinking maybe something along the lines of the old P-40 war hawk/ Flying tiger look might be suitable.

Excellent I used to make the old kits of those when I was a lad (puffs on pipe) Im a real big fan of the P51 Mustang myself, but I get where you want to go with the Flying Tiger look, good choice

Jay

Moving on to texture painting but I have a uv question.

I notice that you layed all your uv's for the engine body out so they were all vertical and horizontal.

Well I spent HOURS trying to manually do that with mine and I am so frustrated.

First you can't grab a group of uv's and say - make them all horizontal AND try to keep relative spacing. So for areas with tight corners I have to zoom way in and try to pick each uv one by one, then try to straighten one line and then repeat (a lot!).

Then when you have them all straight vertically and horizontally after HOURS of picking individual uv's for each line, the uv's look horrible! They end up all diamond shaped and warped.

I cannot apply the uv unwrap command to the uv's once manually straightened or (BOOM!) I am back to the curved mesh again.

As you can see the main body of my model is curved and no mater what I do I cannot get the uv's to lay out vertically and horizontally!

My uv grid looks good on the engine although they do not run perfectly horizontally and vertically on the entire engine. They run at an angle on the very front and back, but they are all square and undistorted.

For this mesh its not going to present a major problem because I am assuming that I will only be dropping a texture (rusty metal) on the entire area, but if I ever wanted to actually paint in photoshop along those curved edges it seems it would be a pain!

What am I doing wrong!

UV's still seem to be getting the best of me, but I will tame them!

while on the subject of texture painting, any good suggestions for learning texture painting with photoshop?

Oh I see what I am doing that is causing the curving uv's.

I looked at your video again Jay, and I see that you split the engine down the middle and also into sections.

The front nose section of the engine is an even cylinder so it lays out evenly but the engine housing tapers so you can't just split it and unroll it and keep the uv's straight.

I was trying to just have a single seem along the bottom of the engine so I was trying to avoid cutting to many edges. I am hoping this is a common mistake for people just learning UV layout.

I could probably leave the engine in a single piece but just to be thorough I am going to redo the engine housing uv layout.

Is this better?

I still cannot get the uv's perfectly vertical and horizontal without distortion.

So is it better to cut the model up and get the uv's all running as vertical and horizontal as possible or is my original unwrap acceptable?

Both have all the uv's pretty square it's just the second version has them all running more vertical and horizontal at the cost of having to have a lot more seems.

Similar view of the original layout.

The uv's seem to be pretty square but the are not running as uniformly vertical and horizontal.

There are less seems though.

Which is the better layout?

I feel like an optometrist...Is this better or worse? One?... or two?...

Hey Dude

panic not!

Im probably one of the few who love doing the whole uv layout thing.

I used a cylindrical projection for the main engine with the seam hidden away underneath, but I think I still managed to get rid of that anyway. All the other circular parts were planar mapped along the z or x axis. if you want the uvs straight, select a row and use the scale tool to line them up, easy, same as lining up verts on a model.

layout wise I would go with the most optimum set of uvs, meaning the ones which cover the uv space the best utilising the whole area. I have days where its all a bit of a fuss with getting them right but if you have to split it into sections to make the uv set clean then do it, I can understand being precious about it all as Im a real f***** for that kind of thing, it has to be right, but somedays you have to bite the bullet and make do with it as it is.

Jay

Still working on the texture painting. I added a few more goo gaws.

I added trim pieces down the back and around the upper air intake and also down the nose and around the main air intake.

This adds some interesting surface detail and also covers the texture seams.

I can't stop adding things! LOL

I am searching for reference material for the texture painting. I start to paint some stuff. It looks cartoonish and I start over again.

I keep getting ideas about modeling in new doo dads and goo gaws. I think subconsciously it's because I am avoiding learning the painting tools. ;)

I think my plan is if I get it bristling with enough stuff then each piece will only have 5x5 pixels on my 2k x 2k texture map and I won't have to worry about painting lots of detail. The color texture map will just need to be a bunch of 5x5 pixel blobs of color. LOL

2/3

3/3

1/1

1/2

2/2

1/1

wow, you've been busy :)

Christmas break!

What do you think of the changes?

changes are awesome!

i like the detail on the rivits (the things bolting the pieces together)

it kinda looks like a goldfish with those little wings and missiles

i do think having the missiles there makes it look a little weird, maybe three is too many? maybe just two, it looks a little crowded

I'll reduce the hard points on the winglets to two.

I added the hard points as an after thought. I was thinking more for sensor gadgets and maybe extra fuel. I just modeled the simple missile looking things to put something on them.

Is this better?

2/2

yup,
i think it looks much better with just two missiles

Love it!
 

Love it!

I really like the added rivets and trim panels! The only thing I don't like are the missiles and the stubby carrier wings. It makes the whole speeder look cartoon'ish, big body - small wings, even though they aren't wings. I'd say loose the wings completely, and mount the missles on brackets on the body, one above the other...

Otherwise fantastic! Happy texturing! :p

-Jacques

perhaps some sort of box-like extrusion on the sides to launch the missiles or that the missiles are mounted on

or a tank-like turrent, something that isn't thin and jutting out but rather blends in?
like how you have the little lights on the side

Thanks for the feed back guys.

I am just playing with different ideas.

I kind of like the winglets. I was never sure of the hard points and missile looking things. I was considering leaving the wings and just taking off the hard points and missiles or leaving the hard points but having nothing on them just to suggest things could be added there.

They are of course not there for any kind of lift but simply to support the mounts for various devices. This is similar to what is seen on attack helicopters.

The missile shaped thingies I added simply to put something on the hard points. In the final I was thinking something more along the lines of sensor type gizmo and probably just one and maybe something different on each side for more asymmetry.

I'll rethink them maybe in the end I'll have two versions. It will be a simple matter to put them on a render layer and just switch them on and off.

Here is a render with nothing on the hard points....

you could put something like the radar from Metal Gear Rex
http://th01.deviantart.com/fs9/300W/...Puckducker.jpg

another view of the winglets...

I was thinking of maybe a camera/flir pod with a ball socket like on the apache and something else on the other side so it has an asymmetrical Silhouette?

My brain is still working on things guys. I am having a bit of a creative block on the paint scheme and some minor technical stuff.

I have all the UV's laid out, but I am having some trouble deciding how best to create the UV texture map(s). One big one with everything, or break it up into several smaller ones.

Fantastic work mate.

I really like the added details you have added to the model,

WHERE CAN I BUY YOUR TUTORIAL DISKS :) lol

i am have just got to the point of the UV mapping in the tutorial, biggest problem i am having at the moment is getting the smoothing right on the body, Jay said he didnt want to use subdiv on the model so i am trying not to although most of the other stuff i have done have all been subdic'd (option 3 on kb in 2009)

thanks Mithandra

Thank you M. There is really not a lot more that I have done then Jay demonstrates in the tutorial.

I added a tad more detail to some of the bits. Jay's engine greebling is outstanding and after more then a week of on and off work on the texturing I cannot even come close to the quality of Jay's. His weathering of the texture painting and other maps really makes his renders POP!

All mine are still looking flat and so I have not felt them worthy of even uploading. But I am working on it.

I checked your WIP and your work is progressing nicely. As Jay said it's good to see folks adding their own creative touches to the model.

==========================
"If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulder of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Ctbram

you are too kind sir! many thanks.

upload the textured version, get some crit....

also you can help weathering the textures by baking out ambient occlusion maps and add it to the color textures, it will help darken the little nooks and crannies on the model. You can adjust the opacity of the map in PS to suit. Its just practice, get references and go for it, its not difficult.

regards
Jay

moving forward...
 

I have been away for a while and decided to get back into things by picking up this project again.

I added some new geometry. I added more detail to the engine in the form of some pressure vessel. I borrowed the idea from macsrevenge's version at:

http://srv01.simply3dworld.com/showt...highlight=sand

I have to set up the UV's for the new bits, then start back in on texturing.

I really want to texture this but I have not seen a GOOD maya hard surface texturing tutorial. I have spent a good deal of money searching. There was one from gnomon in the behind the scenes series although this one was for maya I was very disappointed as the instructor kept glossing over all the details. It amounted to him showing the initial untextured model, some basic prep work, and then a couple brush strokes and finally jumping to the finished beautifully textured model with zero useful instructions on how to get there!

The best I found was one from Gnomon by Neil Blevins but it was for 3ds max and I found almost nothing that I could figure out how to apply to maya.

I sure wish someone would make a detailed hard surface texture painting tutorial for maya and photo shop. The real issue is using the painting tools - Photoshop, illustrator, bodypaint, zbrush, mudbox..., figuring out how to use these without any training is hard. Also, I could use a full on photoshop painting techniques tutorial showing how to paint panel lines, raised and sunken panel details, grunge, drips, scratches, chips, etc. I am not a painter and have not used photoshop much so every time I fire PS up I get frustrated and quit.

Anyway, here is the finished model with the new details (I still need to do the UV layout on the new bits before I can start texture painting).

1 of 3: full view

2 of 3: engine view

3 of 3: engine tight shot

angle from the top...

Sorry the texturing is taking forever. I am having to learn how to use photoshop pretty much from scratch. So I have been watching and reading all the photoshop tutorials I can lay my hands on.

So that I can get some kind of forward motion on this I decided to do some paint overs to help me with the texturing starting with rivets, panel lines, access hatches, and latches. I was hoping to be able to project the details onto the model using one of my 3d paint applications.

Please let me know what you think of the layout?

I am a nub when it comes to painting and using photoshop so I have to figure out how to paint all the details like panel lines, latches, hatches, rivets, hinges which I guess I will need to use color and bump maps.

To do:

1. Do some paint scheme paint overs

2. Figure out how to get the paint over stuff from photoshop onto the model.

3. Continue to learn to paint in photoshop. Need to learn techniques for painting panel lines, hatches (raised and sunken), latches, rivets.

4. color maps, add decals, add grunge, bumps, specs...

What is the difference between a bump map and a normal map? I know that a displacement map actually tessellates at render time and that a bump map simply gives the appearance of depth by playing tricks with light, but I don't know how normal a map differs?

Here is my paint over for the panel lines, rivets, hatches, and latches details. Please let me know what you all think?

Here is just the rivet, panel line, hatch, and latch layers...