UV mapping workflow and prep
 

Hi,

I'm currently done working on a preliminary model of a house and I'd like to apply some basic texture w/ bump maps to have a sense of it would look like. I'm not too sure where to start, checked a few tuts on UV mapping but I'm not sure if my method of modeling sort of screw me over for the texturing. Basically, my model consists of 5 modified cubes in which I've inserted edge loops and extruded faces to create windows. In some case, where it would become a big mess of edges and small faces, I "detached" walls from the main shell. So now, my question is: if I want to apply a standard seam metal texture to the roofs, and a cement plaster texture to some walls, do I have to detach the roofs from the main shells? How should I go about this? Is my modeling method wrong? And finally, something weird happen on one of the roofs, can't really tell what...

Many thanks!

the weird thing on your roof is just your normals - select the face and use the set to face normals tool.

your best bet for UV mapping your house is to use planar mapping - it should be relatively easy. take a look at this tutorial which will show you the basics of UV mapping.

http://www.ramyhanna.com/texturing/p...utorial01.html

as for applying different materials, you can apply specific shaders to certain faces - your best bet tho is probably to just seperate the various pieces - so make your concrete part out of one model, your metal piece from another, and so on, and then just create specific shaders for each. do the tutorial and start experimenting and it will begin to make more sense. :)

It worked and the tutorial is really good, many thanks!

nice job - i like your models - what's up with the nearest window tho? looks like something's going on.

Thanks!
Yeah, since the house is in 5 different parts, some of the faces are overlapping... That's what I was gonna do next, clean up the overlaps and model the bits of the interiors that you can see from the gianormous windows...

I was wondering; because I got weird results before, what does the function "detach component" do exactly? I detached some of the walls, but for one or 2 it didn't seem to work; when I was trying to insert new edge loops, the highlighted part seemed confined to the edge, not across the face, like it should be doing. Is there something I would need to know about residual geometry left by the "detachment"?

I would do all your geometry clean up before you go ahead and texture... Weird things can happen when you jump a step in your process :)...

The best way to check your UV Layout works it to use a checker texture, then go ahead with your own textures and work out the kinks and tweak.