Texturing 101--how's it work

Iceblade

Iceblade

Admiral
Okay eder, or any of you guys really, how do you make the textures?

I know use photoshop and your're favorite modelling program, but do you have to create a texture for each surface, relatively speaking?

More questions tomorrow? :D
 
Well, if you want you could just make one texture and apply it to every surface. Of course, doing so makes the resulting model suck hard if not done properly.
 
In the interest of keeping Standoff running smoothly on systems with decade old shitty video cards, I use the same texture for as many faces as I can. Just group the faces in ways that seem reasonable (ie: one texture for wings, one for the top of the body, one for the bottom, one for the engine glows, one for the guns, one for the winglets, ta-da, done).

If you're doing high-res work, use as many textures as possible, though. :p
 
A lot of packages should be able to take multiple textures and merge them into one giant skin; this is basically how most games used to do it (for example, the SWACS is basically 1-2 textures), and assuming it doesn't have funny angles and will fit in the requisite texture size, this means you can more or less ignore the actual number of textures you use. Of course, making a conscious effort to keep the number of textures down will help the final texture size. :)

I'm a programmer, not an artist, but back in the days when I was first learning to apply textures in OpenGL, I always thought it was amazing that artists would go to all the trouble of making these fancy skins and then applying textures to every triangle, resulting in some truly weird texture map coordinates. Later, I learned that the tools are a little more sophisticated than that. :) Although from what I hear, it's still a PITA to do, and do well.
 
hmmm...

That would also explain why the modellers of 3d ships create its textures as well because they know what the surfaces are and how many surfaces there are.

Hmmm... this makes my job a wwweeeeeeeee bit harder than I expected, :( but I am up to the task. ;) Plus, I am the artist of the my mod's group anyway. This does mean I will have to cut down on the mission coding for the time being. :D (yahh!!)
 
For games, they have one to two textures because they unwrap their meshes and texture each surface with the same texture, just a different part of this. You've probably seen this before where the texture looks like it's been pulled apart--AKA a "skin". It's a common technique.

For high quality models, this is also a good way to have seamless texturing. I've never utilized that myself however... instead I use separate files because they're easier to keep track of. One for diffuse, one for bump, one for specular, etc. That makes 2 or 3 textures per surface. One of my models has 33 textures alone for bump and diffuse (that's not including the textures I created for the cockpit). So as you see, the number can get quite high.

For your purposes, if you're texturing for a game you probably only need one or two 512x512 or 256x256 textures for a game model.
 
For reference purposes, Standoff's fighters have 1 or 2 256x256 textures, transports and corvettes have up to 3 256x256 textures, and capships have 10 to 20 256x256 textures. Keep the numbers, double the resolutions, and it should look ok in a more modern engine.
 
I'm working on 3ds-max R5 (I'm green-rookie on this mean-machine and on 3d modelling in general)
I have done some modeling and wanted to make textures - How do you paint your textures in good proportion to your model?
Do you some how print your model's surfaces and sort of paint "over them"?
Or may be you preffer to go on a higher res texture and then "sqeezing" it over the surface (or rather "pull" the surface over it)?
 
I "print the surfaces" like you said, resize the image to a high resolution (like 4 times what the final resolution is going to be), then paint over it (and resize it again).
 
I guess this is more of a technical question, but hot do you "print the surfaces"?
is there a function in the 3d modeller you use (or is there suppose to be) to print only the surfaces?

or do you have to do it manually?
 
Manually - separate the 3d model in pieces, each of which will correspond to a texture, then either unwrap the faces manually or just hit print screen from the best angle. ;)
 
In short -
break the model to several blocks - ones on which I won't have disturbed eye sight, then print it from the angels I want to paint (basicly top, bottom, front, aft, sides...)

Thanx :D
 
Okay, all of these who have posted above are, I'm sure, far superior at modelling/texturing then I. I've only been doing 3d work for the past 1 and a half or so. However, I thought I'd lend my two cents here. If you want to do some simple, straightforward texturing with just one file then this is what I'd do. Select a view that is directly above your model. Render it so that it forms sort of an object mask (your model is white against a black background). Do a screen print. paste into your image editor (Photoshop 7 is my prog of choice!) Paste the screen print. Crop the image to what you need and then start adding details. This technique works best for games or low detail renderings. If you want something to look nice up close go with the afore mentioned methods. My way is good for "fast" texturing.

P.S. Results may vary...
 
HammerHead said:
In short -
break the model to several blocks - ones on which I won't have disturbed eye sight, then print it from the angels I want to paint (basicly top, bottom, front, aft, sides...)
Click to expand...
That's pretty much what I do, yep.
 
just thought i'd mention,
if you get 'Deep UV' you can let it auto-map 3d models for you.

it isn't as 'nice' as a human-being mapping the model, but the results are decent.

if you don't care to learn how to really do it, then Deep UV is a good short cut.

-scheherazade

http://www.righthemisphere.com/products/duv/
you can get a demo too, if you don't care for the price tag :)
 
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