UV Mapping for Realtime Graphics

podperson

podperson

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NIce!

I like it.:cool: So does the way UV mapping work is, you have your texture in the UV editing window and you map the pieces of your model onto it?:confused:
 
Generally you start out by unwrapping, which gives you a projection of your wireframe onto a 2D square. You save the square to PDF (this is a nice feature of C3D, in a lot of other 3D package you have to take a screen shot).

You then paint over the wireframes using Photoshop (say). The files associated with the tutorials include the texture maps in layers.

You then bring this back in as a material and test out your mapping. From there, it's a matter of progressive refinement.
 
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Very nice! You have a smooth style and a rhythm to your speech which is easy on the ears and clear to understand. You seem to cover things in a quick and logical way which I think beginners would really appreciate. Keep up the good work! :)

Now for my complaints: The first thing that sticks out like a sore thumb on your UV mapping tutorial is that you didn't show the actual texture that you were mapping to in the UV editor! Oh no!

Some trivial, but picky things I can complain about with your airplane model, because I'm an aviation buff (I know it's just a tutorial, so it's not a big deal but...):
- The engine cowling should be perfectly round for a radial engine
- The wheels should be bigger
- The wing struts should be thinner, not square
- The vertical stabilizer/rudder should be larger
 
Are you telling me Snoopy's biplane was less than realistic? :)

There's a set of files linked to the tutorial containing all the textures.

I got pretty frustrated. I actually recorded the tutorial three times, and didn't get audio the first two times ... so by the third time I kind of skipped over stuff. (The first run through, I painted the texture map.)

And -- oh -- I just figured out how to make the darn texture show up in the UV Editor. Yay. I may redo that tutorial when I'm less ticked off at SnapzPro X 2 ;-)
 
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podperson said:
Are you telling me Snoopy's biplane was less than realistic? :)
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Ha! Good point!

In that light, the only thing I don't like is that the semi-square cowling on the nose just reeks of subdivision modeling...

You did a really fantastic job of it. I'm sorry that you got frustrated with it, but the end product is pretty sweet!

[edit] Doing video tutorials is really hard to do! Don't let Snapz pull you down! [/edit]
 
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I did a little tweaking as per your suggestions ... but the model suffers from some early decisions (if you want circular cross-sections you really need to start with a hexagonal block ... squares just don't subdiv nicely into circles). I only did it on the spur of the moment for the subdiv tutorial, so it's nice that it doesn't royally suck ... but it could be much better.

I found some Sopwith Camel references (no front view though). I might have to model some of the WWI classics and put together a quick air-to-air shooter ... after I ship weasel :)
 

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Looking at it now, after your excellent tweaks, it is really apparent that the biggest problem was the big square wing struts. It never ceases to amaze me how some of the simplest changes can make the biggest impact. Looks great man!:D
 
Awesome tutorial, thanks so much!

A question ... is it possible to grab and move individual vertices or edges on the UV map? This is something that gets done in 3DS Max a lot and really makes mapping an existing texture onto an object much easier.
 
Yes, you can directly manipulate everything.

The only real annoyance is selecting a set of contiguous polygons in the UV map is a manual process.
 
D'oh.

The problem with Cheetah3d is a lot of really useful functions are buried in menus and have strange names. (There's no groups, but there's group select...)
 
podperson said:
The problem with Cheetah3d is a lot of really useful functions are buried in menus and have strange names. (There's no groups, but there's group select...)
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I think you've just described 3D apps in general. :wink:

Personally, I find Cheetah to be pretty good in this regard, because of the context sensitive right click pop up menus. I do agree that there is some inconsistency with naming though. Still, Cinema 4D calls subdivision modeling "HyperNurbs"!
 
podperson said:
The problem with Cheetah3d is a lot of really useful functions are buried in menus and have strange names.
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There is some truth to that!

squareitround said:
I think you've just described 3D apps in general.
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Hehe, Maya has a menu item to search for other menu items... in the like four menu sets. I got a pretty good chuckle the first time I saw it.
 
I'm an idiot! I just thought I'd get that out of the way

Hi,

When it comes to tutorials, I possibly need more "hand holding" than most. I understand about the unwrapping businesses (sort of), but I have seen single texture sheets (or UV sheets) that have artwork for more than one object on them, but I don't seem to be able to unwrap more than one object and have it display on the same page. Is there a special way of doing this or is it simply loading many unwrapped objects into photoshop as different layers?

It seems as though the chap who has done the plane unwrapping tutorial has achieved many objects on one sheet -- how?

Help! (please)
 
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