How do I place texture to not appear diagonally on mesh garment?

[Darla Fanbridge]

When rendering a joined object the image showing vertical stripes or other patterns on each joined part (top and skirt),the stripes should appear on the skirt vertically, not diagonally.  What should I do to make the stripes appear vertical on the skirt?  Does it have to do with unequal height and width of the texture, or what is the issue?

[Ivanova Shostakovich]

   More information and, even better, an image, would make your question easier to answer.

[Rolig Loon]

If you were simply placing the texture on a flat prim, the answer would be to simply rotate the textures in your editor.  On a garment, all bets are off because the orientation of the texture depends entirely on how the UV map is laid out.  You could try just rotating the texture, but my guess is that it's unlikely that the texture will end up aligned properly on all islands in the UV map.

[Chic Aeon]

Items that require linear alignments (horizontal - vertical or both) need to be mapped as such during the UV unwrapping part of the process. If it is YOUR mesh then simply rotate the "skirt"UV pieces for example so that they are going in the same direction as the textures for the top.  If it is a mesh template you are using then it is still possible (hopefully) but will take a lot of trial and error to get what you want.  

Note that not all mesh make pay attention to the direction of the UV islands ^^ including some that do lovely work but somehow forgot that wood just doesn't GO in that direction LOL.  

You can get a better guess but looking at the parts of the map that are the top and the skirt and make sure that the texture is the same RATIO (height to width) so that the stripes don't look bigger on the top than they do on the skirt. If the meshes were made to be singles and not part of a dress and especially if made by different people, then it is going to be very difficult to do what you want to do. 

So rethinking your texturing design might be called for. 

[Darla Fanbridge]

Here is an image to prove my problem:

The stripes are in the skirt.  In order to display the stripes vertically. I would have to have the stripes come outward from the center of the skirt in the UV image.  How do I do that?

[Pamela Galli]

You would need to make the skirt a rectangle shape, probably by using Align to Active Quad unwrap. Search this forum for instructions how to do that. Aquila posted something about it within the last couple of days. But to make the stripes uniform you would need to do some adjusting of vertical edges.

Edited July 22, 2017 by Pamela Galli

[Rolig Loon]

19 minutes ago, Pamela Galli said:

Search this forum for instructions how to do that. Aquila posted something about it within the last couple of days.

And here it is >>>

It won't be quite as simple as that, because the edges of that island in your UV map are irregular, so you'll have to do a fair amount of manual fiddling. 

 

[Darla Fanbridge]

I thought of something else too.  It could be possible I could display the stripes the way I want it by using texture paint.  I am not sure if all you need to do is add the texture to the s,it instantly or if you would have to paint the texture.  Could somebody please post a link to a Texture Paint tutorial?  No YouTube tutorials, please, because they are time consuming to go through as opposed to a tutorial in text and still images.  I tend to learn things fast if it's not a video tutorial.

Edited July 23, 2017 by Darla Fanbridge

[Chic Aeon]

Just another thought after seeing the UV map (thanks for that). Have you tried uploading this to see if it will work with any texture? It looks like perhaps your program unwrapped the skit and top "for you" without any instructions from you. I can't see how this will work at all without the stripes stretching way way out at the waist (the very tiny circle in the middle of the texture area of the skirt as I read the map).

As Pamela said you need to make  the skirt into a rectangle by defining a SEAM, applying rotation and scale (this in Blender, not sure what it would be or if needed in other 3D programs) and unwrapping. Even then while the stripes will all go the same direction, they will not be uniform in width. If you think about it, having a striped gored skirt in real life is pretty much impossible too. It needs to be a gathered waist skirt. 

So you might want to rethink your design as it looks like it won't work at all. Even with substance painter (don't use it so have no hints there) the UV map as it is appears to have some big issues.

Just trying to save you some work. It could be that I am reading that map incorrectly for what you are planning. If so, disregard this 

[Darla Fanbridge]

Well, I created four separate items: two sleeves, a chest, and a skirt.  I joined them together hitting CTRL+J, then created a seam on the merged object, but not on each of the four items begore joining to form one outfit.

I hope this clears things up, and I am pretty new to creating mesh outfits in Blender, so I am trying to figure out where i went wrong.

[arton Rotaru]

22 minutes ago, Darla Fanbridge said:

I hope this clears things up, and I am pretty new to creating mesh outfits in Blender, so I am trying to figure out where i went wrong.

You went wrong on the UV mapping as has been pointed out by multiple people already. Have you looked at the thread Pamela mentioned, and Rolig posted the link to actually? The model in Aquila's example is even a skirt like object.

Fixing the UVs will be by far the easiest way to fix it. Painting those stripes on the current UVs will be by far the hardest way.

[Pamela Galli]

1 hour ago, Chic Aeon said:

 

So you might want to rethink your design as it looks like it won't work at all. Even with substance painter (don't use it so have no hints there) the UV map as it is appears to have some big issues.

 

I would just pick an over all design and be done with it. 

If I just had to have stripes I would texture a sphere inworld and take a screen shot. But even m c Escher could not make the stripes be uniform width.

Edited July 23, 2017 by Pamela Galli

[Darla Fanbridge]

I do understand about the ActiveQuads, but the problem is, it costs money, and I have a tight budget at this moment.

I did try the ActiveQuads method, but an error message came up.  Is there any way I could use Active Quads without purchasing an add-on, if there is already an add-on in Blender 2.76? 

[Rolig Loon]

20 minutes ago, Darla Fanbridge said:

I do understand about the ActiveQuads, but the problem is, it costs money, and I have a tight budget at this moment.

I'm not sure why it costs money.  The method that Aquila described uses standard Blender functions.  It's straightforward and does not require an Add-On..

Reading back though your last few posts in this thread, it looks to me as if you never marked seams properly and then unwrapped your skirt mesh, so everything is on top of itself in the UV map.  I'd suggest working through some of Gaia Clary's basic exercises in unwrapping mesh.  I'd also recommend a thoughtful romp through Ashasekayi's YouTube tutorials, most of which are a little old now but are beautifully done and still quite useful for understanding how to model and texture with Blender for SL.

Edited July 23, 2017 by Rolig Loon

[Ivanova Shostakovich]

   Judging by what looks to me to be baked AO shading in your image, is this some kind of circle skirt design?

[Pamela Galli]

1 hour ago, Darla Fanbridge said:

I do understand about the ActiveQuads, but the problem is, it costs money, and I have a tight budget at this moment.

.  Is there any way I could use Active Quads without purchasing an add-on, if there is already an add-on in Blender 2.76? 

Aquila showed exactly how.

[Chic Aeon]

7 minutes ago, Pamela Galli said:

Aquila showed exactly how.

Agreed Aquila did show that.   It is a great way to get things into even squares, but for me LOL -- I never seem to NEED that. I need things in very UNEVEN squares in order to keep the ratio of the texture correct. So honestly while I tried it long ago it doesn't work for how "I" work.  Not sure if that add-on would do the job even if you bought it (I didn't not and still mapping by hand which is fine as I like mapping, just not as much as making the textures with the nodes. 

As Pamela suggested trying the garment with an overall pattern (at least first) would be a good step.  I don't think anyone is going to have an easy answer for you simply because there are some major problems in the design area that can't be overcome. If you try with an overall pattern maybe all the things we are saying will make more sense :D.

 

 

[Aquila Kytori]

 

 

3 hours ago, Darla Fanbridge said:

and I am pretty new to creating mesh outfits in Blender, so I am trying to figure out where i went wrong.

Not enough seams

I don’t make clothes but as a general guideline I would suggest that you add / mark seams on your 3D mesh clothes  items in the same places as the item would have seams in the real world.

For example, a mesh T-shirt would need 4 seams, one down each side and one around and under the arm.

This would separate the T-shirt into 4 UV Islands when unwrapped. Front, back and two arms. It’s not a coincidence that a real world T-shirt is also made up from 4 separate pieces of material.  Front, Back and two arm parts.

After UV unwrapping, these UV islands need to be laid out in the UV space/ square in a sensible manner so that they can be easily textured. ( Rotation and scale.)  They also may need some other editing to avoid stretching.

In the example below the skirt was first unwrapped without seams.

Then Seams were marked down one side and around the lower part of the waist band.

The skirt was Unwrapped again to give 2 UV Islands :  Waist band and skirt.

The skirt part was UV unwrapped a third time using the Follow Active Quads method, ( Square off one of the quads in the UV island and then unwrap).

The new unwrap was scaled to fit back onto the UV space.

A striped texture was then loaded into the UV space and in the 3D viewer, the view was changed to Texture to see how the pattern looked on the mesh.

The gif looks a bit rushed because there is a 2Mb limit to the size of image that can be loaded to the forums.

 

 

Having just uploaded the gif I see that the max for a Image /gif is 4.88Mb, will remember that for next time.

 

Edited July 23, 2017 by Aquila Kytori

[Darla Fanbridge]

Very interesting post.  It explains clearly where I went wrong and what to do in this task.

I do have to ask, what keyboard shortcuts would I have to use in order to show the menu to select edges or faces in the GIF image?

 

Also, for an imported .Dae file I already created, most of the faces are triangular.  What UV Unwrap method would I have to use?

Edited July 23, 2017 by Darla Fanbridge

[Aquila Kytori]

To select edge loops :  In Vertex or Edge select mode,  hold down the Alt key and click on an edge (or vertex) with the right mouse button.

To select more than one edge loop ,  Edge select mode and hold down Alt + Shft keys, then select.

Selecting  face loops is the same but in Face select mode.

Ctrl + V     to open Vertices menu.

Ctrl + E   to open the Edges menu.

Ctrl + F   to open the Faces menu.

W       to open the Specials menu.

To convert triangles to back to quads,  Select the triangles / part or all of the mesh, then  open the Faces menu  ( Ctrl F ) and choose the Tris to Quads option

To select only part of a mesh that is separated from the rest of the mesh with a Seam (or seams), for example towards the end of the gif, I selected only the skirt part and not the waist band, in Face select mode hover mouse over the mesh and hit the L key.

It is sometimes usefull to Pin UV's in place. If you are doing alot of editing in the UV editor and unwrapping different parts separately, once you have a UV island how you want it to be, select all of that island and open the Uv's menu and choose the Pin option. Even if later on you accidentaly have this part of the mesh selected when unwrapping another part it will not be unwrapped again because it has been pinned in place.

You begin to see the similarities between working in the UV Editor and working with RL cloth and clothes patterns?

The UV space / square is your cloth and the UV islands are your paper patterns.

 

Edited July 23, 2017 by Aquila Kytori

[Chic Aeon]

2 hours ago, Aquila Kytori said:

After UV unwrapping, these UV islands need to be laid out in the UV space/ square in a sensible manner so that they can be easily textured. ( Rotation and scale.)  They also may need some other editing to avoid stretching.

A beautiful example as always but ----

My point was that it appeared that the skirt was VERY gored with no waist area at all  and YOUR example is pretty much a gathered skirt as I was saying. So I don't see how that method will work on the example she gave. Maybe I am missing something :D. Wouldn't be the first time for sure.

Actually now that I think about it, what is shown (at least my reading of the UV map) was called a "full circle skirt".  The gored skirt would typically have seams (you can see them here in the old pattern cover). 

 

Gored Skirt

 

I found an example of a full circle skirt (this post is getting VERY VINTAGE) and how one would make it in real life. This is what happens in real life with a full circle skirt and a linear pattern :D. 

 

[Darla Fanbridge]

I do admit, I like the gored skirts myself, even though they were popular in the 1950s, and I was born in 1972.  Though I would prefer a midi style myself.

If multiple seams are needed for the gored skirt, how many vertical seams would be recoomended around the skirt?  And where would the seams be placed?

Also, is it possible someone could post a diagram on how to shape the hemline on the bottom of a gored skirt?

The gored skirt reminds me of the Betty Swing Dress available at The Secret Store on Marketplace.  That dress is reminiscent of the 50s.

Edited July 24, 2017 by Darla Fanbridge

[Darla Fanbridge]

I checked out some diagrams online this morning, and discovered that some gored skirts require only 6 seams, so it's only a matter of starting with a mesh circle, and using just six vertices.  It may seem like it would come out as a hexagon, but I would mark each of the six seams along the skirt, and then using each face along the skirt, subdivide each face, one at a time.

Am I on the right track with this?

[arton Rotaru]

14 hours ago, Darla Fanbridge said:

If multiple seams are needed for the gored skirt, how many vertical seams would be recoomended around the skirt?  And where would the seams be placed?

Unfortunately I don't have much, if any, experience with skirts , but if I understand that image Chic posted correctly, that tartan skirt is cutout as is, from a square sheet without any seams. This would be the circular UVs you had initialy on your skirt.

[Darla Fanbridge]

I remember buying this mesh dress template from Marketplace last week:

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/WC-Blouse-With-High-Waist-Midi-Skater-Skirt/7456467?id=7456467&slug=WC-Blouse-With-High-Waist-Midi-Skater-Skirt

I also wanted to buy the OBJ file, but the link to purchase it in the description is no longer valid for some reason.  Where else can I acquire this OBJ file?

Are there any mesh dresses of the same variety or with a gored skirt on Marketplace that I could purchase the mesh template and download the OBJ or DAE file for texture baking or 3D painting purposes?

Edited July 24, 2017 by Darla Fanbridge