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 ^_^

Lastly, here's the hand that I've been working on.

Some things to note:

1) I haven't begun on the middle, ring or pinky fingers :p :blush:

2) My UVs here have a bit of a "ripple" look to them; that's something to keep an eye out for.

3) The UVs here hav a bit of a "ripple" and are stretched.

4) Seams

Those are bound to happen; it's a conflict that occurs when the 3D space of modeling and the 2D space of texturing collide.

In this case, you have two options:

a) Ignore the seam, and lay out the UVs so that the hand UVs are uniform and the finger UVs are uniform, and when the time comes to paint your texture, you're careful about how you paint.

or

b) Lay out the UVs for the hand and the finger, and if you are not going to sew them (you can't sew everything :p ), adjust the placement of the finger UVs so that they have continuity with where the finger meets the hand.



Miscelaneous tips and tricks:

1) Holding "v" and middle-mouse-clicking in the UV window will snap UVs to UVs; exactly like snapping things to vertices while modeling. This is handy when you go about sewing seams together.

2) Keep seams where no-one's going to see them, if you can help it.

3) Sometimes UVs get flipped, and textures on faces appear "backwards." If this is the case, select the UVs that make up the backward faces, and in the UV window, choose Polygons -> Flip UVs -> Options, and choose either horizontal or vertical flipping.

4) You can also scale selected UVs "inside out" to achieve the same effect as #3

5) When using planar projections, make sure you are selecting the correct axis.

Not only that, but make sure the axis you are selecting corresponds with the actual axis you want to project along.

By default, Maya is a "Y up" world/space. You can change this, but be sure that you are aware of your change and choose the appropriate axis when making planar projections.

cool thanks for the help man, appriciate it soo much... finally i kind of know how to do it :)

i finished my number box though two of my numbers where back to front, (5,6) i tried x,y,z,camera in planner mapping though it still didnt help kind of since it kept flipping the number backwoods... for my texture, would i have to reverse the (5,6) to get it perfect? if you get what i mean, sorry :p

any other things i should know about texturing or in the texture editor before i do some things?

cheers buddy, marlon

heres a screenshot of my number cube ... ( lol at 5 & 6 :p )

http://img378.imageshack.us/img378/7620/73359054ty2.jpg

I think I might know what the issue is; UVs sometimes get flipped.

Select the UVs that make up the backwards face in the UV window, press "r" to bust out your scale manipulator, and completely turn the face "inside-out," either horizontally or vertically.

I'll try to update the post above yours with tips and tricks ;)

Looking at the attached diagram, the blue UVs need to be where the green ones are, and vice versa.

Just flip em, and all should be well and good in the universe ^_^

cool ... i figured out another way and fixed the backwards 5 and 6 but is this a bad method of doing it? i just simply did camera but first angled my first perspective view soo it would be correct and it was simply the way the others where in the first place ...

I cannot say I am familiar with the method you used.

I take it you found that option in the UV window, Polygons -> Flip UVs -> Options, and then opened the camera tab?

Well, if it worked, it worked ^_^

But yes, under Polygons -> Flip UVs -> Options, you can also choose horizontal or vertical flipping; that will essentially have the same effect as scaling (but has percision :p )

dam yeah, might as well you your method since it only took a couple of clicks while my method took like 2 mins :bow:

That flipping issue is actually a good way to show that using numbered boxes may be better than a checker.

If you're using a checker, you can't tell if something is flipped or not; Maya just displays it as black to white, to black, and back to white, and...yeah...it all looks the same in the end.

"That flipping issue is actually a good way to show that using numbered boxes may be better than a checker.

If you're using a checker, you can't tell if something is flipped or not; Maya just displays it as black to white, to black, and back to white, and...yeah...it all looks the same in the end"

yeah your right, learn something new every day isnt it true :) ived learnt many new things though, thank to the help of you ;) i just cant believe i can finally do BASIC texture, wooo :beer:

Heh, glad I could help a bit ^_^

Anyway, I'm off to class now...

When I get back, I want to see that you've laid out the UVs for Michelangelo's Pieta, and it has a nice texture on it!

Kidding...have fun :p

EDIT:

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~mvnak/Eur...aelangelo).jpg

well i shall head off to bed even though its the start of my holidays ... 4:16am here in melbourne and plus in a couple of hours i will be having a lan party at my house :headbang:

thanks for the help again,

anyone else like to share some ideas or some free tutorials/tips...

cheers, marlon

EDIT:

"Michelangelo's Pieta" LOL! ill have it finished in a sec :p have fun ...

im saving this thread! will come in handy when i look at UVs


thanks guys

robin

Hey guys, not really read the thread through so sorry if its going over old ground ,

I would have a play with the different uv settings. planar, clyindrical, spherical, etc to get a "feel" of them and then go from there. No one way is the best, its up to you. The main thing to think about is keeping the mesh the same ratio in the texture editor as it is in the model, that way you aviod the dreaded texture stretching and compressing, its well worht making the effort uving as it is modeling (as ive found out to my peril)

Its learning another thing again, once you get it down you will be able to model for texturing etc etc, and really relise why edge loops and quads are the way forward and not just a modeling/animation term!

@ rcb25 - yeah thats a great idea rch25 :)

thanks for the comment steve, im now going to test them planar, clyindrical, spherical etc to get a good feel and understanding :)


marlon

Everyone is allowed to download that hand; it wasn't just put up for marlonjohn :D

"Everyone is allowed to download that hand; it wasn't just put up for marlonjohn "

ya ... what he said :)