How to texture a mesh object that you did not create and do not have UV maps for?

[WimRasmussen Constantine]

Hi,..

 

This is my first time creating a thread in any kind of forum.... so please bare with me as I have no understanding of forum etiquette and as I have just been given a telling off about it I want to let people know I'm a noob and apologise in advance if I do something that's a no-no in the forums...

I don't have really any experience in building except for creating the odd prim objects (and a huge tin man once) for the fun of or convenience, but I usually change the texture on the inside of house and so on... with the introduction of mesh and now mesh objects in the houses too I am drawing a complete blank on how to texture them.... from reading other threads I understand you need the UV maps... which I don't have... I have been given a test pattern but I have no idea how to use it... could anyone help?... 

 

Thank you... Wim. :womanembarrassed:

 

[Boyd Doghouse]

if the mesh is modifyable then you can add any modifyable texture to it you wish

[WimRasmussen Constantine]

It is modifyable... sorry I should have been more specific and said that I want to apply a texture to just one face but when I tried it applied it to the whole object... I can't seem to select a just one face of it...

[Chosen Few]

If the creator of the model only gave it one material, then it can only have one texture on it.  If the creator gave it multiple materials, then it can have multiple textures.  You can change the textures, but you cannot change that area each texture will occupy.   

SL supports up to eight such materials per model.  Material assignments are created in the source modeling program.  Each area of the model that has unique material assigned to it can be given a unique texture in SL.

You cannot select individual faces in SL like you can in 3D modeling program.  SL's editor utility does not have the capability to address models down to the component level.  It merely considers each surface shader material group to be a "face". 

Make sense?

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

Heya Wim,

that 'testpattern' you have been given, does it indicate in any way the layout the textures need to have ?

(like: is it clear which space on this test pattern defines a certain area on the model?)

In that case it would be your UV-replacement so to say. And you can just open an image editor and paint whatever you wish over these certain areas to give it the look you want.

As Chosen said already, in case you got several of these test pattern, then you have to use all of them to fully texture your model.

If the model has more then one material (equals a 'texture-face' in secondlife) then you will need to find out which of these testpattern belongs to where and keep that in mind when painting your textures for it.

If the testpattern only has color and numberfields (something like this: http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTY3AlBjRQDXlbAPl7MGknV-MMxLVvgQZFPwsBLaft4L2gmoFKX )then you will have to look closely which numbers and fields are where on the model to figure out  where exactly to paint over it in an image editor, to cover a certain area on the model.

PS: if you only got the already uploaded mesh, and not the original DAE file, then this is all you can do. (Or contact the creator and ask for some more 'conclusive' help textures to paint on). 
Should you however have the original files (.DAE) then you could take it into any 3D program and you would have the UVs available.

If you want you can add maybe a screenshot of the model and include the test-pattern into an answer here in the thread.
That would help us to give you more tips.

Cheers! Code

[WimRasmussen Constantine]

Hmmm... I don't know lol... 

 

The parts that I want to texture already have a texture on them, I do not know if it's one texture that is made to fit the mesh perfectly giving it the appearance of two or more textures or if it does have different materials... 

[WimRasmussen Constantine]

[WimRasmussen Constantine]

Sorry I couldnt type and paste pictures O_o noob....

 

These are two of the areas I am trying to change, I've including the edit boxes so you can see what the texture is showing as as well...

and this is the test pattern that Chosen sent me a link for..

 

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

okay that makes it easier to explain.

 

It's like i wrote in my former answer with this testpattern chosen has given you, you can easily see which area will be  taken on the texture by a certain part of the building.

- For the best if the house has copy rights, make a copy of it first.  (because you will have to put the test pattern onto it, and i assume you don't have the original textures for the house. This way you save the original and can't mess it up)

- then rez the copy, and apply the test pattern to all available faces.
- It looks like the house has several texture faces, regarding the fact that you can see several textures when inspecting
  the house.

- when you watch these textures that show up closely you can see already where on 'one' of each of the textures which 
  area of the house is taking place (like the wall with the lights, the floor and so on)

- After you applied the test pattern to the first face on your house, you have to inspect which numbers show exactly on
  which wall or floor:


- as you can see in the above example, it is clearly visisble that this certain wall occupies the area from blue 5, to 
  lightblue 6. (left side)
- So then you can open the testpattern in your image editor (GIMP or photoshop) and paint over this exact area
  (right side) to give this wall a new look. 
- the same you repeat for all walls/floors etc that share the same texture together. Until you filled the whole texture.
  (which ones that are, you can see when looking
  at the existing textures of your house. It should make clear to you which parts are together on one texture)

Should you however have the textures that are already applied on the house, it would be even easier. There you would just need to save them to your harddisk and overpaint the areas you want. But i guess that is not the case.

Hope this helps you to understand it better. =)

[LepreKhaun]

Thank you for such an informative posting!

 

I thought all that would've been needed was to carefully crop that screen capture to get this:

And then scale it up to 1024x1024 to get the actual texture as it was laid out  (though somewhat blurred and noisy). It's always so enlightening to see how professionals do these things!

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

Heya LepreKhaun,

thanks, it's my pleasure =)

And yeah that's a simple solution too.

I just normally would not rely on this procedure because the preview images are very small and once scaled up
- as you already figured - they become very pixelated and distorted, and thus the perfect lining up is a bit harder to figure. 

Mostly i suggest using the original texture if somehow available for the user, to use and paint over. That is still the best and undistorted visual reference. 

But the screenhot/crop method sure works too.

When starting off with drawing simple one-color fields onto that scaled texture as kind of indicator, and moving them around and applying / testing them on the object until they fit exactly. and then start to paint over those colored areas.

Whilst this works pretty good with simple UV layouts and structures like housewalls etc (unless the creator has made some really wild UV lol) this method can become harder when its about clothing items or more complex things or items with lots of bend and curved UVs and small details.

Or with textures where the background is mixed up into the shapes. (like a shirt, where the wrinkles and folds would continiue over big areas of the texture and the background maybe has the same color or even the same pattern as the shirt etc. to prevent from visual seams or due to the painting methods. In those cases it's already hard to figure what is where, even if you have the full texture (not scaled) and becomes of course worse when being scaled. Then i'd rather suggest using a testpattern again.

In addition: testpattern give you a nice visual reference about  the occupied pixelspace and maybe stretched or contracted areas. To take into account when making your new images. 

Cheers!

[LepreKhaun]

That makes perfect sense to me, thank you!.Now I finally found a use for that pattern I picked up at YadNi's Junkyard so long ago!

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

haha, i'm glad i could find you some new purpose for that poor texture of yours becoming all dusty in the darkness of your inventory =)