Blender - texturing questions

[Rin Tae]

So, I have a bit of a problem with blender. (version 2.59) I know how to create items, shape them, make them look nice and even how to limit their prim-impact once I would upload them into SL. What I don't know, it how to texture them actually. So far, I have watched many tutorials about textures and materials but none has really get me anywhere close to actually making an object and having it be textured in the way I want to do it. I unwrap the item into the UV editor, make a texture to fit it and now I nwould need to know how to make the texture (different looking parts on different faces of the object) stick to the model in the way as it is made acording to the unwrapped UV-map. So far baking it always resulted in the texture either being assigned totally wrong, comppletly appearing on just one face or the entire item being black. I am sure, I am missing something between the unwrapping and baking but I have no idea what and since I am only at the beginning of creation of 3D objects with such programs, I am at a loss on where to look to find out how to do what I want. Thank you in advance for any help or suggestions

[Gaia Clary]

I am currently working on a basic tutorial which also covers texturing in the context of Second Life. Although there are tons of texturing tutorials out in the web, i have the feeling that it makes sense to add one more here.This is a draft version:

   

The final much more detailed and polished video is expected to be published next week as part 4 of the "coffee cup tutorials"

Another tutorial of interest could be:

    http://blog.machinimatrix.org/the-basics-of-texturing-i/

 

[Drongle McMahon]

Did you export the collada file before doing the UV unwrap? If so, that produces a file without UV data. Thhe consequence is that the uploader uses essentially random data for the UV map which can result in the sort of thing you describe. The solution is to export again after making the UV map. The you can look at the way your texture image fits as descried in Gaia's video after opening the image in the UV editor window. If it fits correctly in Blender, then it should fit inworld.

[Rin Tae]

I unwrap things before exporting but I still might do something worng there (being a beginenr and such ;P ) and I have not seen the above posted video yet (*will go to do that after writing this*). So maybe the problem is there and I just don't see it yet.

Thank you both for the responses

I hope they will help

 

*edit*

still no success. -.-    The tutorials seem all to stop right at the moment that I would need to solve my problem, since while I have the UV map, the texture and I can see in blender how it would look when correctly textured, it still turns out totally wrong when I hit 'bake' and when I try to upload, then it uploads without any texture (what is logical since I have to save the texture made acording to the UV-map to the model somehow)

I could I guess texture each face of the object individually, but that would defeat the purpose of the UV-unwrap as it is being shown in the tutorials.

Ironically in the second tutorial posted, the second (sadly unanswered) comment seem to be form soemone with a similar problem

[Drongle McMahon]

I'm not sure exactly how you are trying to do this. There are rather a lot of possibilities within the description you gave. First, you can appy a texture in two ways, through the materials system, or by loading the image in the UV editor while all the faces are selected (for each material). The latter is the way I would test your final texture. It's what is shown in Gaia's tutorial for the test pattern. In Blender 2.49, the exporter lets you choose between material-based or UV editor applied textures. I don't know about 2.6 etc. It is important to know that the image is not actually included in the collada file. it is referenced there with a url that points to the saved file.

The material route has many mapping options and you have to get those right so that it uses the (correct) UV map. It does allow you to apply procedural textures and it can map images to the surface in many ways other than the UV map. When you use those, you need to bake the texture, then save the baked image, which is the texture you need to use in SL, from the UV edit window.

The auromatic loading of textures with the mesh does seem sometimes to give problems, usually because the path to the image file cannot be found. The image and model upload are really independent, and you can just as well do them separately. There's no cost difference. Then you just apply the texture to the model exactly as you would with a normal prim.

So, in summary, whether you have made by painting on a UV layout, or whether you have baked a texture and saved it, first try loading it into the UV editor. When it looks right in Blender, uploade the texture image and the mesh separately and apply it inworld. When that works, you can try uploading them together if you like. It's probably safest to have the image in the same folder as the dae file when you do this.

If you are using the materials system in blender, and that is mis-applying your texture, then we might need more details of the settings to work out what's wrong.

 

[Rhys Goode]

It sounds like you expect the collada file you get after exporting the baked model to contain all the information about the surface texture.  It does not.  You have to save the baked texture as a separate image file (.png or .tga), and upload that seperately from the model ( .dae) file, and finally apply it to the model in SL.

[Gaia Clary]

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Rin Tae wrote:

... while I have the UV map, the texture and I can see in blender how it would look when correctly textured, it still turns out totally wrong when I hit 'bake' and when I try to upload, then it uploads without any texture (what is logical since I have to save the texture made acording to the UV-map to the model somehow)

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When you already HAVE the texture, then why would you need to bake ? All i can think of is this:

Whatever you see in the UV image editor is

 

1. either a ready made image coming from an external source (like PS)  In this case there is no need to bake, because your texture is already made in PS. then you will want to just "use it" as it is. So you would import the texture separately from the mesh import, apply the texture after you rezzed the object in SL (What Drongle says)
2. or it is a result of a bake process from the Blender render pipeline. Then you actually HAVE already baked, and then you will just store the image (image -> Save as ...) , then upload it separately from your model, and apply ... as above

 

Now, when you say, that you already see the texture wrapped correctly around the obect in Blender, then one of the situations above occured and your problem is solved by uploading the texture separately.

If you work with static meshes (not rigged meshes! for rigged meshes the SL importer seems to have a bug that prevents it from importing the textures) and if you have your textures ready made as images and if you insist on wanting the collada exporter also export the textures to SL, then you have one alternative way to go:

 

1. You can create a new image based material (for each texture face of your object)
2. For each material you create a new "texture" in the texture section (right to the material section)
3. The texture type is set to "image or video"
4. you select UV mapping in the mapping section
5. and you select the correct image in the image selection box.

Now you can export your mesh as Collada and your images will be exported along with the mesh. You will find the images in the same folder where the mesh is exported.

I have another tutorial which shows how to get it done, but unfortunately that tutorial was created in a completely different context. however it might help you to see what i explained above:

You only need to setup the material(s) as shown in the secnd part of the tutorial and then export your mesh(es) as Collada. The images will be exported automatically in that case.

But remind: This only works for static meshes. As soon as your mesh has  weight information, the SL Importer no longer sees the images and do not ask me why

The tutorial that you realy want to see will be part of my coffee cup series, but its not yet ready for public view.

[Rin Tae]

And so it works ... I have tried that some time ago, but it has not worked either but I guess it jsut comes down to not seeing the most simple solution ;P

But that is how one learns such things and as for expecting how it should work, then I don't know what to expect yet since I don't know enough about it. However my simple medical cabinet seems to be msotly correctly textured now and maybe it wil lbe textured completly correctly soon.

 

I msut however say, that I found the tutorials I have seen all being rather unclear on this point about what todo with the UV-texture once it is made (do nothing XP ). I might be the only one but as a beginner I found that at the end of the UV tutotial .. especially those about SL .. there should be something more said about it. I might have missed it of course but at least nw I am happy that this one model worked out somehow.

I'll need to make a completly new texture now that I see it inworld but that is a simple thing to solve ;D

 

tytytytyty for the help

[Gaia Clary]

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Rin Tae wrote:

I msut however say, that I found the tutorials I have seen all being rather unclear on this point about what todo with the UV-texture once it is made (do nothing XP ). I might be the only one but as a beginner I found that at the end of the UV tutotial .. especially those about SL .. there should be something more said about it.

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thank you for that feedback! I will instantly use that in my upcoming tutorial and take more care about the workflow than ever before