Is it better to texture in blender if I'm working with mesh?

[Myra Wildmist]

I'm slowly, very slowly, progressing with Blender and have moved beyond creating some basic mesh shapes. I've imported some of my work into SL and I'm experimenting with those.

However, I'm having trouble texturing more complex items and even basic shapes such as spheres and cylinders will distort a texture when I apply them in SL. So far no amount of tweaking will fix that.

I don't know much about texturing outside of the basics, so I have some newb questions:

Is there a trick to texturing irregularly shaped objects? (I'm going through some youtube tutorials, but no luck so far.)

Should I texture my mesh objects in Blender and then import them? Is that even an option? I haven't tried uploading texturing from Blender.

What texturing tutorials would you recommend?

Thanks

[Maeve Balfour]

Not sure because you haven't mentioned it - but have you gotten to the stage of learning about UV-mapping your meshes yet? If not, then that is a critical phase of the mesh creation process - in very basic terms, a UV-map specifies how textures are applied to surfaces, via defining mesh face areas on a square texture space (akin to a dressmaker's pattern, if you can visualise that - your mesh laid out flat so that a flat texture can be mapped to it).

UV-mapping is a bit of an art in its own right, as much as creating actual mesh shapes is. It's definitely worthwhile learning this properly, as it will massively increase the ease (and versatility) of texturing. A complex shape cut up and laid out flat via a well made UV-map will be fairly easy to apply textures to, if the "dress pattern" so to speak is easy to follow. This UV-mapped mesh is exported as the standard collada file to SL - the mesh will carry this UV-map with it.

In regards to texturing inside or outside of Blender - You would probably only use Blender for "baking" shadow maps and specular (faked shine) - these are simply 3D generated textures which you use to overlay your 2D texture in a paint program. Possibly you would use Blender's nodes section to create procedural textures, but again, they would still need to be exported as image files to use in SL.
You would need Blender (if that is your preferred program) to create your UV-map, but once you have done that, you export the resultant map to a jpeg or similar image file, and simply use that as template to create your textures on with a paint program like Photoshop or freebie program (whichever you prefer). If you have ever tried creating AV clothing via painting on the templates, then this is exactly the same concept - those AV templates everyone uses are UV-maps.

I should state that personally I am NOT a Blender user - however, the general principles of mesh creation are universal, regardless of program used.

Don't give up though - it's a steep learning curve at first, but mesh is definitely worthwhile sticking with and figuring out. You will love creating with it once you master the basics.

:matte-motes-smile:

[Dilbert Dilweg]

I am currently trying to wrap my head around UV mapping my self(harder than I thought it would be). It has been the toughest yet to learn.

Here are some tutorials that may hep.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=uv+mapping+blender+2.6&oq=uv+mapp&aq=2&aqi=g10&aql=&gs_l=youtube.1.2.0l10.2122l5453l0l8737l13l13l3l1l2l0l137l666l8j1l9l0.

 

@ Maeve thanks for the post. your post helped me figure something out.