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Mapping Tutorial

liberty1

liberty1

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dominicanrepublic
Hey I was looking around for tutorials and came across this. I thought it would be useful for someone like myself that is fiarly new to the concept and might need an idea on how to Map.

It has a lot of images and it very detailed on the process.


Mapping Tutorial
By Waylon Brink

Enjoy
 
Looks like a simple enough tutorial. Nice find!


UVW Mapping was my hardest thing to learn in Gmax, and sadly, it was massively hindered because I didnt know that the blue and white checkered button had to be clicked 'on'. That was the longest week (almost) of my life. Leaving that button off, your textures are deactivated. Its on the Material Editor panel. (Cant miss it).

If you just remember that a UVW is like shining a projection of a part of a texture sheet onto your object, or polygons on an object, and that the projection (sheet) is set up at an angle at which its shining on the object, it helps you to see or invision how that part of the mapping works.

UVW Unwrap is simply the 'adjustment' process.



The most basic form of Mapping is the flat Plannar. That is the square sheet. You can squeeze and scale the sheet, make it rectangular, etc. The UVW Unwrap will not change the Plannar shape or angle. The Plannar (sheet, reflector that shines on the object), can only be modified in the UVW Map flipout or stack.

Now, with Max/gMax, you have options of types of Plannars, like Cylinder, Cube (Box), etc. This is brilliant for mapping bolts and things.

Also, you can map parts of an object, with separate Plannars. You will have to collapse the stack (easy way) and then go and select Polygons, and then add a UVW Map, adjust it to fit, then add a UVW Unwrap to that, and adjust there, and collapse the stack, and Voila, you have modified only a set of Polygons on an object. Just note that you must collapse the stack each time you redo Polygon sections or when you finally collapse the stack, they will be a complete mess.

Once you get the hang of it, it can go very fast, and be your best friend in making models swiftly and with some cool, kick butt texturing..
 
Mapping is one of the reasons why you should strive to create a clean mesh. I don't know how some guys do it but some people start modeling using Editable Meshes and they cut and refine dealing with the chaos of triangles that show up afterwords ... I have seen some really nasty modeling work from very good looking models .. yes!! models that look great in flight simulator but when you look at the mesh work you say to yourself, "what in the H happened here?!" I know this because I worked for several development teams and nope, I wont say which of those had the nasty models ... I would say that these developers were only interested in "the end result" rather than being organized with the mesh itself.

Yes the simplest form is planar mapping but one shouldn't get too overwhelmed with the details, it's really not that hard.

By the way the green edge you see on the UVW Map means that is the right side of the texture, so it should always be facing to the right, DON'T FORGET THIS!!

Also, all mapping should be square or your textures will be compressed along the axis which is out of proportion (unless your textures happen to be of the same dimensions BUT FS likes only SQUARE textures), trust me you don't want that.

By the way, lionheart .... are you the "Lionhearts Creations" guy with all those great looking add-ons in flightsim.com?
It is an honor to have finally met you if it is you, I download so many of those lionheart creations :) I have the autograph
book ready, lol.
The most efficient mapping method is multi-material mapping using IDs you should also strive to use as little files as possible, too many files cause performance issues and you also want to use every space on that texture as well, empty spaces = a texture that is using memory that will never be touched (avoid this)

I use the .MD3 exporter from the Temptest game pack to save a copy of the UVW map as a texture file, this is more accurate and you can keep adding to your texture until you have taken up all the real estate.
 
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All of your recommendations make this oddesy much easier to bear with. Especially since it is easy to go mad once in a while.
 
Mr.FaosFX said:
By the way, lionheart .... are you the "Lionhearts Creations" guy with all those great looking add-ons in flightsim.com?
It is an honor to have finally met you if it is you, I download so many of those lionheart creations :) I have the autograph
book ready, lol.
Click to expand...


Little ole me... Complete with metallic silver, super stress treated eyebrows.



Bill
 
An honor to meet ya!! And just hang in there liberty, I swore a lot today with my DC-8 nose, I'm strived so much for perfection that I went insane...today I finally backed away and told myself ... I may not get it perfectly accurate but at least let me try to make it look accurate. I just don't have enough documentation or guides to invest in that amount of detail, I'm going to have to eye ball the darn thing, what I didn't wanted to do.
 
Mr.FaosFX said:
...BUT FS likes only SQUARE textures)...
Click to expand...

That's not entirely accurate. FS only likes textures who's dimensions are powers of 2...

1024x512
1024x256
64x2048

Any of the above, and any variation you can think of will work. Some sizes might not actually make any sense mind you, but they will work!

As a practical example, you could have a texture 1024 wide by 16 pixels high that you use to tile a long, narrow strip of mesh. :D
 
I use 1024 X 512 for panels sometimes.

Also, 256 X 1024 is awesome for prop blade textures. :)
 
Bill are there some VC textures that have to be square? I thought I remember that. Is it the $ textures?
 
That's not entirely accurate. FS only likes textures who's dimensions are powers of 2...
Click to expand...

Ah thanks for clearing that up, that's what I meant to say, the power of 2s thing had me thinking squares. :eek:
 
tgibson said:
Bill are there some VC textures that have to be square? I thought I remember that. Is it the $ textures?
Click to expand...

It's been far too long for me to remember accurately, but I think you are correct about $pan type textures. I seem to remember years ago trying a rectangle and it didn't work... :twocents:
 
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