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# 1 22-01-2005 , 12:50 AM
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texture questions

I have made it through the cartoon dog tutorial. I would like to texture him and eventually work on to rigging and maybe animate him. I am still new so bear with me on this. The dog itself is one object. They eyes and collar are seperate. I watched the texture tutorial here as well and I am not sure how to pull the UVs out and get them into photoshop.

But for the dog would you want to do that? It would seem that it would be harder to get the UVs to wrap around the dog and get the textures just right. Maybe I am off base so let me know. Wouldn't it be better to model things a seperate objects to a point to texture them better. Like if I wanted to add fur to just his head. How would I do that if the fur texture would be added to the whole object. I guess I am a bit confused as to how it all comes together texture wise with a large object such as a car or plane.

Since I am new I want to make sure I am getting the flow down as I go so later if I animate I haven't messed myself up because of the way I modeled the object. Hope that makes sense. Thanks

# 2 22-01-2005 , 06:00 AM
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Ever seen a bear skin rug? The UV map for your dog will probably look something like two of those next to each other. One for the "top" of the dog, another for the "bottom"



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# 3 22-01-2005 , 03:56 PM
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I understand that you can do it like that but maybe I am getting confused. What is the difference between a shader and a texture then? Say I want my dog to have a nice shiny black nose. would you do that like the texture tutorial and do it in PS? or if you apply a shader to the dog's nose then it will jsut shade the whole object of the dog. I guess that is where I getting confused.

# 4 18-02-2005 , 06:23 AM
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Thought I give some explaination

opps made boo boo


Last edited by junkyBob; 18-02-2005 at 06:25 AM.
# 5 18-02-2005 , 06:24 AM
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Thought I give some explaination

Hi there,
I am just getting started with understanding uv mapping ect. so I could be wrong but this is how I interput some of the rules of mapping.

1. What is the difference between a shader and a texture.
Keep in mind I could be wrong, but this is what I think it is. A shader is the core of what you use to color or add a texture to your selected faces or the entire object. As oppose to a texture, which could be a preset that maya uses such as checker, cloth, 2d fluid ect or an image file of your own. This node only holds the information of the above examples, and its coordinates. Sort of like there is a node called polySurface and polySurfaceShape. The polySurface holds all of the coordinates information and how it should render ect. and the polySurfaceShape is the object itself that holds the info of its' width, height, and depth ect.

2. How should I texture the dog?
Well first off it would be a good idea to understand how the uv's get wrapped and unwrapped.
Here is a tut which I am not to happy with but it seems the best one I found so far.

Anywho, what I mean by unwrapping and wrapping uv's, is by the choice how should a texture be wrapped onto the object you are working on. There are 3 ways that I know of. which are as follows...

1. planner-
This means that the surface is "flat" such as a 6 sided cube. Each side of the cube's surfaces are flat.

2. cylinder -
Obviously this should explain itself. Though basically anything that looks like a hose or a leg etc. such as a humans leg, you would use this method. Also from experience, I notice that mapping an area using cylinder mapping only has one axis when it gets auto projected. To fix this, after projecting the uv's, you might need to rotate the map.

3. sphere -
Though I havent used this method yet, but obviously this should explain itself as well.


Also, as to your example of say you wanted a shinney black nose. This sort of thing depends on how you want it to look like. If your looking for just a shinny nose, you can get away with just using a blinn shader. Not knowing to much about blinns, though what I do know is that you can control the shinnyness as well as adding a bump map which will give some bumpyness to it. So another words for just a shinny black nose, you can use a blinn shader, set the color attribute to black and then set the glossiness and maybe the spectacular color of it. And the great feature about this is that when the light hits the nose, it will shine in the correct direction of the angle to where the nose is located from the distance of that light. Where as doing it in photoshop, this will make the object look fake because even if light is not hitting in the correct direction, the nose will still look like that area has a shine to it. So when you want somthing shinny, I would go with a blinn shader as oppose to a lambert.


In conclusion, as to how you should texture the dog, keep in mind how the uv's should be wrapped and my advise to you is, when projecting the uv's in there correct directions, I would problably use the cylinder and sphere projections and keeping in mind how each shape of your objects are, and how the cylinder and sphere projections will layout the uv's.

Other than that, I am still learning as well, so maybe this subject will be an experience for the both of us.

# 6 12-03-2005 , 08:12 AM
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Re: texture questions

Originally posted by SpiffyAnim8ter
... and I am not sure how to pull the UVs out and get them into photoshop.


I had the same problem and everyone used to explain me all the dificult things, but i didn't know the main one. So, when you map the texture with planar, cylinder, sphere or automatic mapping and when you put all the UVs in their places by moving, rotating, scaling, fliping them in the UV textur editor (Window>UV Texture Editor), you just need to select them all and then hit Polygons>UV snapshot in the UV texture editor window. I hope this explanation will helpuser added image.

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