Blender mesh texture problem

[P4rker Engineer]

Hi guys, I haven't really used the forums but it seems like a place with very helpfull people. I am new to meshes and I am trying to learn blender enough to at least make myself some cosmetic technologies. Now I have made this ugly looking sword to try the uploading of a mesh to second life. But there is a problem with its textures.

 

The sword has 3 different parts that I have marked seams of, unwrapped and placed each part into a different image. In blender when I go to look at my mesh in texture mode I can see all these textures in place nicely. Ok they look ugly but they look right.

Shown in this image:

http://i.imgur.com/mEps6m3.png

I have saved everything into the same folder and had the right options selected such as including textures and such.

However when I uploaded this mesh in the beta grid,it seems different from what it looked like in blender:

http://i.imgur.com/WoIP6tE.png

 

So, I've been searching around this forum and other places to fix it but so far I haven't been succesfull. Any tips?

 

Thank you.

[Drongle McMahon]

Can you put this texture on; in Blender, load it in the UV edit window wgile all faces are selected, then set texture display type and shadeless shading; inworld, just drop it on each face. With pictures of those it will be easier to see what's going on. Meanwhile, do you have more than one object? and do you have more than one UV map per object? You can tell by looking at the properties panel on the right after clicking the little triangle mesh tab icon. There is a list there. The exporter will export multiple UV maps, but the uploader will only use one of the. Getting the wrong one often causes people problems. You can select the right one in the list and make sure the Only active (or selected) UV option of the exporter.

[P4rker Engineer]

Thanks for the reply Drongle. Here it is ingame and on blender:

http://i.imgur.com/aw99kkx.png

 

http://i.imgur.com/mM1DhCa.png

 

 

Anyway, I only made this sword out of 1 cube. What I had was 3 different bits. 2 parts of hilt and the blade. I marked these parts seperately and unwrapped them in a SEPERATE image. I am started to think this was my mistake? Can we only use 1 image for our uv mapping?

 

Edit: So I've tried starting from scratch. Made this werid wingn thing. Marked the outer wing seam and then marked the inner wing seam, created a new image, unwrapped them seperately and then opened a new image which is the texture. In this image you can see that the object is textured and the uv map is to the left. But when I try uploading to second life it just is white even when I turn the texture options on.

http://i.imgur.com/1koJslQ.png

 

All the files are saved into the same folder aswell. I really don't know whats going on.

[Drongle McMahon]

Those both look like Blender ... can see the grid .... from opposite sides. One thing is clear. Youf UV mapping is completely fragmented, so that the texture doesn't flow across edges. I'm not sure how that might have happened. Maybe you marked all edges as seams before unwrapping? Or was this deliberate? I need to see it inworld to see whether it's the same or different UV map. 

You need to distinguish between images and UV maps. This is something many people have difficulty with at first. A UV map is just a list of numbers. They tell the renderer which positions in the texture image will be made to lie at each vertex when it is stretched over the mesh. When you look at the lines and vertices in the UV editor, that is just a way of visualising and editing those positions. It doesn't have any real existence as an image. When you put an image underneath it, Blender will do the strtching of the texture over the selected faces, according to the map, and you see it on the mesh (if you have texture mode in the 3D view). The image is not a UV map. It doesn't contain the information about what goes where. Using the same image with a different UV map will give a completely different result. You can get this idea fixed by dragging some of the vertices around while looking at the results on the mesh.

I'm not sure what you mean by "parts" here. Is it even more than three objects (which could explain the fragmented UV mapping). Are they separate objects? For a model like this, I would make it all in one object. The you have two chouces with the texturing. If you leave it as just one material, that means you can only apply one texture to it in SL. So then the UV maps of the different parts must not overlap, and the texture must have the parts all laid out in the same image. If you make three separate materials, then you can apply a different texture to each. In that case, the UV maps that are going to be used for different textures can overlap. I'll make a couple of pictures to illustrate (or if you are lucky, Aquila will beat me to it!)

[P4rker Engineer]

I basicly followed this tutorial to texture my ugly sword.

 

[Aquila Kytori]

I don't have time today so will leave explaining the importance of correct UV unwrapping to you  :matte-motes-wink:

 

 P4cker, in the mean time you could watch this video  https://cgcookie.com/blender/2011/01/21/intro_uvmapping/

Or a very nice sword modelling an texturing tutorial series (but not really aimed at  beginners) you can find here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiQOHSzyooc   that links to the UV Unwrapping  of the sword.

 

 

[Drongle McMahon]

Ah. The problem with that is that he selects all the edges and makes them inti seams. That makes each face a separate UV 'island', so that the texture doesn't spread smoothly from one face to the next. It's usually better to use the minimum number of seams. Using too few will leave you with distorted textures. In the picture you can see on the left a sword with seams highlighted. Doing the simple unwrap with these seams gives the islands shown in the upper UV map. Now, on the right, the texture spreads nicely, with discontinuities in acceptable places. Note that here the three different parts have non-overlapping UV maps. That means a single image can be used to put different textures on each part. Then just that one texture can be applied in SL (or uploaded with the mesh).

Also on the left, the three different colours are showing three different materials. In this case, the UV map of each part can fill up the entire area of the UV map. Each material in Blender becomes a different face in SL, to which you can apply a different texture. That means there are more pixels per area on the object in SL, which sometimes works better. It also means you can use general purpose textures, say steel, leather and brass, without having to make a custom texture for each sword. The overlapping of the UV maps doesn't matter because the faces are textured independently. In fact it's an advantage because you get more pixels per unit area from the same texture.

Watch the tutorials Aquila linked to. They are excellent.

ETA - the unwrapping was the default you get by pressing the U key twice. Just make sure everything is selected, or all of one material if you have materials, before doing that. If the map is horribly distorted, it's most likely that you need more seams somewhere. The worst is where you have a cylinder without an edge seam. I edited these a bit for neatness sake, but avoided changing them too much. Keep looking at the test texture to see where there is distortion. I usually spend a lot more time getting the UV mapping right than making the mesh!

[Dree Eames]

This is a very nice UV tutorial link you posted:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiQOHSzyooc  

I have a few additional suggestions for anyone following the method that may enhance the UV experience:

1)  Follow active quads.  A small thing, but if you have limited time (or if you despise the process of UVing),  you can eliminate the step of straightening out that initial active quad in the UV edit space and make the process quicker. Simply select the face and in the edit window press U and  RESET.  The uvs of this single active quad will automatically align to the boundry of the UV window and have straight edges. You can then, in the UV edit area press S and shrink that active quad's UV square down to something manageable in size.  With the Active quad still selected return to the Edit window and  hover over the other faces for this island and press L to quickly select them in one go (assuming you are in Face select mode and the island area is delineated with marked seams.) Finally in the edit window select U >Follow active quads.  No need to move vertices around in UV space or align edges by hand.

2) Those semi-circle greebles could be simply unwrapped with standard Unwrap.  Unless I'm missing something there is no advantage to aligning the view and performing a projection uv for these simple items.  Sometimes it's easy to get carried away with more complicated UV techniques when a simple unwrap gives excellent results.

***3)  If you have duplicated geometry and you forget to uv unwrap the original before you mirrored, duplicated or arrayed, just unwrap one of the items and  then select each in turn (including the UVd one) and use the shortcut P to make each it's own object.  In Object mode select them,  selecting the UV'd version last so it's the Active selection. Then use CTL L > Transfer UV Maps and copy the active object UVs to the duplicates.  With these items still selected in Object mode select the main mesh and press CTL J to join them back up. No need to delete any geometry and/or re-perform the duplication and positioning.

4) If you UV'd sections of your model but omitted the step of establishing UV seams, I recommend you add these boundry seams to your islands in one go using the UV menu. Select from the menu in the UV window UVS>Seams from islands.  Once the seams are in place, in face selection mode in the Edit window you can quickly select islands using the shortcut key L while you hover the cursor over the faces.  Instead of moving the islands off the UV space to flip them and break symmetry, the author could have quickly selected the islands he wanted to mirror with L key in the edit window, then  with the cursor back in UV space he could simple mirror them in place  CTL M>X (or y) to flip selected UV islands to break symmetry.  No need to move anything off the grid and return it to it's original position.

I hope these additions are helpful.  Again the tutorial was excellent, but there's always a technique or two to add to any workflow as an alternative or enhancement.

RE: Number 3 above - for more details on tranferring UVs for mirrored objects:  https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Blender-problem-when-using-the-Transfer-UV-Maps-tool/m-p/2960704#M32336 

[Drongle McMahon]

Thanks, especially for introducing me to the word "greeeble". :matte-motes-grin:

[Dree Eames]

Ah!  Then let me introduce you to it's synonym "nurnie" or "nurnies" pl.  Now anyone reading this will be noticing these terms everywhere, esp. on scifi modeling tutorials and 3d forums.  Personally I prefer the term greeble, but apparently these terms are interchangeable.  

[Aquila Kytori]

Hi Dree

The follow active quads using the Reset short cut you explained in these thread before and I use it from time to time.

Number 3, mapping duplicate parts is going to be helpful. I often forget to UV unwrap the original before duplicating.

And who lives in a house with TWO brass lion head door knockers on the front door !? Pretentious or what lol .

Welcome back

 

Drongle, I learnt a new word from a french guy yesterday on the beta.  Merlon.

[P4rker Engineer]

Thanks to everyone that answered.  I didn't have time to try stuff out but with all these replies I'm sure I can do better. I'll have to watch more tutorials and practice I guess. Thanks again.

[Dree Eames]

Well actually those knockers (and pairs of large knockers seem to be quite popular in SL and not generally considered the least bit pretentious) is actually an image composed of both a front and 3/4 view of a single doorknocker I modeled yesterday in Zbrush.

Thanks for the welcome back, but quite honestly I'm an unrepentant lurker on the Mesh Forum and I've never disappeared completely.  I might miss something important worth learning about Blender if I didn't keep up with the forum postings.

(And I have only a single knocker of respectable dimensions pasted on to my Linden home.  But otherwise I'm perfectly ok with being considered pretentious in a virtual world.:matte-motes-tongue:)

[Drongle McMahon]

"Drongle, I learnt a new word from a french guy yesterday on the beta.  Merlon."

A good one, but where would the merlons be without their crenels?

[Aquila Kytori]

 

---

Drongle McMahon wrote:

 

.................... but where would the merlons be without their crenels?

---

                         W = M - C²

 

   Where W is any kind of basic wall.

 

Hopefully any Swedish person reading this will feel compelled to give me a Kudos