wood texture
 

i have a wooden board i made but the texture doent seem to look like wood at all, http://img462.imageshack.us/img462/8600/board1aw.png

my first reposnce was sothing to do with UV but since i have no idea what he meant, im posting it here

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what does it look like when it renders? some textures are vastly different between the simple shade that's applied in the the various views in maya, and the final renders.

And unless your UV map is really distorted, its doubtful that that is having much to do with it...

Yeah textures can look completly different sometimes, depending on your graphics card.

You can increase the texture resolution (Not too sure where it is in the material attributes as I dont have my PC here with me but I think it migh be in display) set it too 256x256 (think thts right) and it should look better in the view screen, this can however slow your PC down so juat use it to check the positioning of the texture etc by using it with an IPR render.

i know for a fact it not my graphics card, and i aslo know for a fact that in doin gthe UV's wrong, problem is i dont know how to do them right, if there was a UV tutorial, the textureing tutorial didn't show anything at all about UVs or how to add textures it just showd how to make them, i have the thing make i dont know how to set it up right...

What is it that your trying to do???

Its a simple shape so I dont really think that the UV's will make much of a difference to it.

Are you using hte procedural wood texure or an image map?? How does it look rendered?? Have you tried to up the texture resolution as this will halp you see what the rendered image will look like.

im useing the wood texture than comes with maya. (just for reference i have 7.0 unlimited) and i pretty sure i have the uvs messed up, accidently put the texture on another object once it it was almost correct that whas one of my chess peices though and it had lots of sides

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WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE RENDERED!??!!

I know for a fact that the defaul maya wood shader renders vastly differently than just the simple view.... most of the shaders that come with maya render differently, in fact. Including between the software render and mental ray.

And yes, if its just a simple box, its doubtful that UVs are a problem

That might no be the VU's at all, in fact I really doubt it, I think it might be the default 3d placement node that needs adjusting (if you created it that way??)

YOu really need to show what it looks ike rendered.

If your really think its the uv's then go for it.

that would require me learning how to render and m not at that point yet, i want to take things one step at a time. i looked at the render movie and thats way to much for me to try right now how do u make UVs?

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*smacks 'somebody'*

Just do a standard render. Click on the button that looks like those film thingies they use for movies. We don't need you to mess around with lights, or to mess with custom render settings.
Heck, I know very little, really, about rendering, and tend to mostly work with modeling myself. But I'd never (NEVER) consider an object to be finished texturally (or even for a texture to acutally 'work') unless I'd rendered it. Getting a texture made means you do a LOT of work with the IPR, usually. Especially with some of the procedural stuff, like the wood and other shaders. worry about what a texture looks like in a basic sense before ever worry about UVs.....

In fact, sometimes you won't be able to tell at all what a texture looks like until its rendered. The default mental ray skin shader looks green in all the standard displays - because of the way it handles light, it takes too long to calculate on most machines for interactive work....

SO JUST DO A STANDARD RENDER, AND SEE WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE!!!!!

.....I quote the wizards' first rule.....

Exactley Xander!

Furry, I dont think you really need to UV this simple model, is it just a poly cube with a basic shader attached with the wood texture placed in the colour channel?? If so you really need to play about with the settings of the wood material node and its placement node to get it looking right.

Also have you increced the Hardware texture resolution as I suggested???? Doing this would increase the quality of the look of the material closer to what i would be WHEN its rendered whilst still being in the viewport.

Just TRY what were suggesting rarther than going the UV route, trust me.....

so you basicly saying click the "high quality rendering" under the shading menu?

perhaps, but that's only a temporary solution. Texturing isn't really complete until the texture's been checked in a render. Now, ideally, this is checked against whatever setting its going to actually be in (say, with the expected lighting, in the actual scene), but for basic checks, and first ones in any case, simply doing a standard render with the default lights is perfectly fine.
This has nothing to do with rendering concerns, or however good at lighting you are. This is just about checking textures. You must make sure you know what its going to render as - simply looking at it from a viewport doesn't really cut it (although in some cases, such as with mapped textures, you can get a really good idea). This will become more important when you start dealing with things like transparent textures and shadows - some of these details won't show up in the viewport, or even in the Hardware renders... you need at least a moderate level software or MR render to pull them out.
In any case, I'd still reccommend doing at least a basic software or MR render, just to see what it looks like. You shouldn't need to mess with any of the settings, just hit the render button.

Thats one stage, then in tha material attributes go to hardware texturing and in the display quality set it to 256X256, this improves how it looks in the viewport.

THIS IS NOT RENDERING THE SCENE!!

If you want to render do what Xander said, click the little clacker board!

right click in your perspective view to make it the active viewport, then

http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/5...wwindow0yd.jpg

that's how you render.