A CUBE: DIFFERENT TEXTURE ON EACH FACE

[Blade Gaelyth]

HAVING A CUBE IN BLENDER 2.7...

1) Edit mode, selec face 1, unwrap

2) UVEditor, load  image 1, the image goes on the face

3) Assign  material and texture to the face 1 with the image 1

4) Repeat for all faces loading images 2, 3, 4 ,5 ,6

5) The cube is shown with six different images 1-6

6) Export collada for open sim, including texture

7) Upload the dae in SL, activate texture in preview....

WOW...all faces show the image 1, the first loaded in UV editor

Calculating weigth the price is 21 = 11 + 10 where 11 is the mesh price and 10 the texture price.

It means that the six faces are all the same and that the imported texture is only one

8) Upload the dae and rezz inworld: a cube with six images nr. 1

9) Edit it and select face

All faces are marked as faces but are all the same !

Dragging and dropping a texture onto a face all faces change in that texture.

Where the trick is ? What I'm doing wrong ?

[Aquila Kytori]

Hi

I don't think your doing any thing wrong but there is really no advantage to trying to upload the textures along with the mesh.

Usually most people would simply:

 1, Assign a material to each face and UV Unwrap

 2, Export as Collada.dae and import into SL

 3, Import the 6 images/textures for the 6 faces 

 4, Edit cube and with Select Faces checked select the faces one at a time and apply each texture.

 

[Chic Aeon]

Well (not surprisingly) Aquila gave you a lovely graphic with everything you need to know.

It SOUNDS like while you put different textures on the cube, you may have left out making a NEW material for each face. Note the little window with different color balls in the graphic.

EACH time you assign a new material you need to MAKE a new one, then at the end if you are doing something complex, you need to go back after the object is joined and make sure that the materials assigned have "stuck" and are what you want them to be.

I had a lot of problems with this when learning. It is easy to assume that since you can see different textures on the cube there are different MATERIALS assigned. Not the same thing.

And I agree that there is no reason to upload with textures. Also, not sure about the uploading for Open Sim. I have never used that. So if you DO have six materials assigned (not just textures on the faces - so that each time you click on a face a different MATERIAL gets highlighted in the sidebar with the balls) then try exporting with the defaults rather than the Open Sim.

 

Good luck

[Blade Gaelyth]

I known not to be necessary to export textures too in dae.

I yet followed, more or less :-) the Aquila's procedure with no success.

Now I think I discovered the tricks:

1) First assign a material to the ENTIRE cube: it seems to be mandatory

2) Second assign different materials to the faces you are interested in

3) Unwrap face by face AFTER material assigning, not before

4) Upload in SL including textures although there is not textures to import

Thanks and special kisses to both, Aquila and Aeon

[JohnSmellingCats]

Hi Blade,

Baking materials with no same UV in same object

(a mesh object composed of several groups of polygons,
each of these groups has a different material and a different UV.)

1.     TAB (Edit Mode)

2.     select a group of polygons to assign a new material.

3.     remember you can add a maximum of 8 different materials on the same object

4.     Once finished putting all the different materials to mesh, then make selection by item and detach with P

5.     TAB (object mode)

     ,,,then for each diferent object:

     a) TAB (Edit Mode)

     b) A select ALL

     c) U (automatic unwrap)

     d) open UV windows and add a image clicking in (+)

     e) BAKE

     f) F3 in uv window to save the bake

     finally Control + J (join) ataching all parts and export it in collada to SL

Regards.

[Drongle McMahon]

1. Object mode: Add->Mesh->Cube
2. Edit mode: Select all, U->Unwrap (default unwrap, each face fills whole UV space) (note a).
3. Select material tab (8th button with sphere in Properties bar).
4. Click "+" on right of top box six times (six material slots appear).
5. Select each material slot in turn and ...
   5a. Click "+New" button underneath (new material name appears in slot)
   5b. Click the colour picker box under ">Diffuse" and choose a distinct colour. (note b).
        (all the faces will appear to be the first added colour at this point, note c)
6. Select each face of the cube in turn and...
   6a. Select a different material slot and click "assgn" button beneath.
      (you should have a cube with different colours on each face.
7. Export collada file.

This is essentially what Aquila described. It will give you the cube with six materials. In SL, each face can be selected and a different texture can be applied, just as with a prim cube. Some additional info...

Inworld "Faces" are independently textured groups of mesh polygons. In Blender, these groups of are defined by the assignment of different materials to groups of faces. You have to assign different materials to get different faces. Applying textures to mesh faces in Blender by selecting the faces and loading an image in the UV editor will cause them to be used in the 3D view when Textured solid or textured display mode is selected. This is a convenience, but these textures will not appear in renders, and they will not cause the assignment of materials (since 2.49) in the exported Collada file. So they will not make different faces inworld. This is true even if you select the "Include UV textures" exporter option. Once you have assigned materials, they will be included in the Collada export whether you choose to include textures or not. So getting distinct faces does not require including textures in the export.

Although you can do so if it helps, there is no need to separate the mesh to make the UV maps of the different materials. Simply select the material (under the material slot list in the Properties panel) and proceed to map however you choose. This will use the full UV space for each material, so that the UV maps will be overlapping. This does not matter because they will be textured completely independently and the textures don't interfere between materials/faces. If the materials/faces have different areas, requiring difefrent texture resolutions, you can simply use different sized textures. It doesn't matter for the mapping step. Of course you can still map the whole thing in a single go, before or after materialm assignment, so that none of the UVs overlap, but that means that a large proportion of the texture for each material will be wasted.

Notes...
a. This is exceptionally simple for the cube. For anything more complex, it's better to do the UV mapping separately for the faces comprising each material. This can be done either before creating and assigning the material, but it's easier to get it right if you do it afterwards, using the material to select. 

b. The different material colours aren't necessary, but make it easier to see what you are doing. They also show up when you first rez the mesh, so you can easily select faces for texturing.

c. The first material you create will automatically be assigned to the whole mesh.

d. If you already have materials, for example on other objects, then you can simply assign those to the material slots,using the selector to the left of the "New" button, instead of creating new ones.

PS. I recommend against including textures with mesh upload bnecause (1) you have to pay each time even if the textures are unchanged, (2) you will accumulate multiople copies of the textures in folders that are not obvious. Point (1) is overwhelming if you are using general-purpose textures that will be used on many objects.

All this is accurate to the best of my knowledge, but that is far from perfect and I welcome any corrections.

[Johan Laurasia]

There's 2 different ways you could do it.

1.  select each face individually and create a separate material for each one, then in SL, upload the 6 textures and drag them to each face.  That's the inefficient way.

2. Go into Edit Mode, deseect everything, make sure you're in edge mode, then select 3 of the 4 top edges, and the 4 vertical edges of the cube.  Hit Control+E and select "Mark Seam".

Split the 3D view and bring up the UV image editor in one of them.  Click the new texture button, click "OK".  You can also set the resolution of the texture if you want.

In the 3D window, in Edit Mode, select all verts, press "U" then select "Unwrap" (the top choice).

The cube will unwrap into a lower case "t" shape. Like so.

 

In the "UVs" menu in the UV Editor, select the top choice "Export UV Layout".  This will create an image file you an edit in Photoshop or GIMP or whatever, and then in your paint program you can apply images to each face, the area outside the boxes isn't seen when you apply it to a map, so you can leave it as is, or some people put text there stating who created the texture.  In any case, after painting each face as you want it to look, save out the image as a png.

Back in Blender, go to the materials tab in the properties window, click the button next to the color picker, select "image texture", then open the image file.  At this point in material or rendered mode, you should see the map perfectly mapped onto the cube, if this is the case, export the object as collada and then upoad it to SL along with the single texture you made.  Just drag the texture onto the cube and voila...

If you're concerned about Land Impact, you'll want to take the second route.  Uploading 6 images costs more L's and costs more for a client to download 6 textures instead of just one.

[arton Rotaru]

That t-shape is pretty inefficient as well. :matte-motes-big-grin: