Texture Help

[0athenais0]

Hello,

 

I am new to building and texturing. I am using the latest version of Blender. When I apply textures in Blender, they never upload with my mesh into SL even if I include textures. I read that most people don't even upload textures with their mesh into SL, but apply the texture inworld.

 

If that's so, how do they make the texture look its best on the object? When I uploaded a vase I made and applied a texture, it looked distorted. It WAS a patterened texture, but I guess I'm confused because if so many people wait and apply their textures inworld, how do they keep the texture looking uniform and normal? I see so many perfectly textured items on the mp and I can't figure out how people are doing this.

 

I've looked at countless tutorials on texturing, both in Blender and within SL, but I'm just not able to understand how this works. Could anyone lend some advice?

 

Thanks

[Aquila Kytori]

Hi

Nowhere in your post have you mentioned UV's or UVnwrapping.

UV unwrapping is about mapping the vertices of your mesh onto a 2D space (usually a square).

If for example you were making a teddy bear in RL you would start with a patern with the body, head, arms and legs parts layed out on a 2D space, a piece of paper (then you use the pattern to cut out pieces of cloth which will be sewn together to make the teddy). Where the legs join the torso you have a seam. Seams are also used in the mesh UV unwrapping process.

The patern is like the UV map of the Teddy. The diference is in 3d modelling this pattern, called a UV map is made after you have fiinished creating your mesh model. This UV maps coordinates are part of the Collada.dae  file of the mesh that is uploaded to SL.

If you paint an X on your 3D model it will now be mapped to the  UV square somewhere and visa verso if you paint an X on the UV map it will appear on the mesh model (if you have your 3d viewport shading set to Texture mode)

So once you have the model UV unwrapped you can:

                            Bake out the textures you already have on your model to this map

                            bake out Shadow, Ambient Occlussion,Diffuse or whatever maps for your model

                            or paint directly on your model inside blender

                            or paint on your UV map

                            or export the UV map to Gimp or Photoshop and add textures etc there

                            or any combination of the above.

So if this is new to you Google something like Blender UV unwrapping and you will find alot of tutorials going into detail the steps involved it getting a good UV map . Often the first lessen about UV unwrapping is unwrapping a cube

Main rule of UV Unwrapping is , don't waste space   Editing a UV map (resizing and moving the unwrapped parts (islands) around the UV space) can often take more time to do than creating the mesh .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Rolig Loon]

90% of the magic is in how well you unwrap your model and how you lay out your UV map. If you are going to texture a UV map in Photoshop, it helps to plan your seams well, so that you can apply a single texture to islands on the UV map where possible.  Whether you plan to texture in Photoshop or simply drop a texture on the model in world, it also helps to be sure that islands that are going to receive the same texture are scaled and rotated the same and, where possible and appropriate, share a common edge.  Depending on the textures, it may be appropriate to unwrap parts of your model to form rectangular islands so that lettering or linear patterns in the textures follow the shape of your model.

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Rolig Loon wrote:

90% of the magic is in how well you unwrap your model.

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And 90% of the difficulty is in finding a model to unwrap.

[0athenais0]

Thank you for the pointers and advice! Texturing is the next big step for me... I've finally begun to get the actual modeling part down (for basic objects anyway, still need to work on sculpting) and texturing is the next frontier... It seems 10x more difficult than I thought modeling was in the beginning.

 

Here is a screenshot of the vase I want to texture. I've been reading up and watched a long tutorial on uv wrapping and texturing, but the guy ended up just going into paint and using the paint bucket to color his object. Not to mention, he was just texturing a cube. So I'm trying to understand where to make my seams for this vase. I thought I hit pay dirt when I found a vid on youtube of someone wrapping and texturing a vase, but it was no audio and had no instructions for what he did and he did it ten times faster than I could keep up with.

 

 

[Rolig Loon]

Try http://cgcookie.com/blender/2011/01/21/intro_uvmapping/

 

[Tiffy Vella]

It helps too, to spend time testing out your mesh and textures on the beta grid. Then, you can get the LoD versions right, and test your texture on the mesh before paying for any uploads. This can save you a bundle of lindens if you are anything like me and spend a lot of time tweaking textures to get them right.

 

You might find this series of tutorials by Braydon Randt handy for getting through the initial basic meshing and unwrapping stages.