WAY Down the road... Space walking?

Talk among developers, and propose and discuss general development planning/tackling/etc... feature in this forum.
CaptJack92a
Hunter
Hunter
Posts: 68
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2007 9:23 pm
Location: My House
Contact:

Re: WAY Down the road... Space walking?

Post by CaptJack92a »

Ok. I'll work on the 3d modeling. I am still having trouble in blenders newer uv wrapping and texturing [I was good with the older one, but since their overhaul I am still re learning] So, if you can do the textures and such, that would be probably best. I will try to make textures for some objects so you can just add them since I can't get the UV wrapping to work yet. [Top of ship view, and bottom, you can edit as needed] I'll save them all separately in their each own .blend file and upload them here on the forum posts as attachments.
That sound good?
klauss
Elite
Elite
Posts: 7243
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:40 pm
Location: LS87, Buenos Aires, República Argentina

Re: WAY Down the road... Space walking?

Post by klauss »

@Pirate92, I think you'll have to recruit a texturer. I'm no texturer (I just code), and we have even less active texturers than modellers. Even a quick and dirty texture job would work as POC, though, which 3D bases need.
Oíd mortales, el grito sagrado...
Call me "Menes, lord of Cats"
Wing Commander Universe
CaptJack92a
Hunter
Hunter
Posts: 68
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2007 9:23 pm
Location: My House
Contact:

Re: WAY Down the road... Space walking?

Post by CaptJack92a »

Alright, I'll look for a crash course in the newer blender texturing and see what I can do.
pheonixstorm
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1567
Joined: Tue Jan 26, 2010 2:03 am

Re: WAY Down the road... Space walking?

Post by pheonixstorm »

Quick note, do you manually unwrap or use blenders auto unwrap? One of our older modelers, chuck_starchaser, was always getting on to people for doing the auto unwrap. For bases I see no reason not to use auto but best not to rely on it anyway, especially if you want to try your hand on ships ;)
Because of YOU Arbiter, MY kids? can't get enough gas. OR NIPPLE! How does that mkae you feeeel? ~ Halo
klauss
Elite
Elite
Posts: 7243
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:40 pm
Location: LS87, Buenos Aires, República Argentina

Re: WAY Down the road... Space walking?

Post by klauss »

Actually, the pro way is to auto-unwrap, fix it up, pin some vertices, and auto-unwrap again, using different kinds of auto-unwrap for different parts. At least that's what I read somewhere ;) (Never really tried it).

The rationale was that it's nigh-impossible to avoid shear with manually placed UVs (which happens when faces don't preserve aspect ratios between XYZ and UV space)
Oíd mortales, el grito sagrado...
Call me "Menes, lord of Cats"
Wing Commander Universe
CaptJack92a
Hunter
Hunter
Posts: 68
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2007 9:23 pm
Location: My House
Contact:

Re: WAY Down the road... Space walking?

Post by CaptJack92a »

Excellent. I have uv mapping working again! I should have some pretty good models with textures coming soon. I am using "Smart uv wrapping" and am going to put a .jpg image file in [which will be the texture of each thing/ship]. If I use a uv wrapping method that you guys don't use, it's ok right? You can adjust for proper fitting?

And did you mean do one section at a time with separate images for one texture? Or do you want the texture to be one image?
klauss
Elite
Elite
Posts: 7243
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:40 pm
Location: LS87, Buenos Aires, República Argentina

Re: WAY Down the road... Space walking?

Post by klauss »

Pirate92 wrote:Excellent. I have uv mapping working again! I should have some pretty good models with textures coming soon. I am using "Smart uv wrapping" and am going to put a .jpg image file in [which will be the texture of each thing/ship]. If I use a uv wrapping method that you guys don't use, it's ok right? You can adjust for proper fitting?
No we can't. Unwrapping is a sensitive matter, once done, it can't be easily changed without redoing all textures - it's a pain. You gotta get it right from the beginning.

But... as I mentioned, we need a proof-of-concept first (POC) - for that, it doesn't have to be perfect. It just won't go in-game as-is if it's just a POC.
Oíd mortales, el grito sagrado...
Call me "Menes, lord of Cats"
Wing Commander Universe
CaptJack92a
Hunter
Hunter
Posts: 68
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2007 9:23 pm
Location: My House
Contact:

Re: WAY Down the road... Space walking?

Post by CaptJack92a »

Ok. I'll finish this really simple ship up and try uv mapping it. Whoever uses blender, which uv mapping do you use? If anyone here uses blender.
klauss
Elite
Elite
Posts: 7243
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:40 pm
Location: LS87, Buenos Aires, República Argentina

Re: WAY Down the road... Space walking?

Post by klauss »

The few times I did (which means very little since I'm not good at it), I used mostly projections and LSCM. They're both good at avoiding shear.
Oíd mortales, el grito sagrado...
Call me "Menes, lord of Cats"
Wing Commander Universe
CaptJack92a
Hunter
Hunter
Posts: 68
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2007 9:23 pm
Location: My House
Contact:

Re: WAY Down the road... Space walking?

Post by CaptJack92a »

Ok, here's a quick mock up of a ship I did in the past hour or so and textured in a zip folder. It opens with blender once unzipped. The texture is saved in the textures folder as a tiff.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
CaptJack92a
Hunter
Hunter
Posts: 68
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2007 9:23 pm
Location: My House
Contact:

Re: WAY Down the road... Space walking?

Post by CaptJack92a »

The detail of the objects will vary depending on how much time I have to make them, and since this is a mock up trial file, I didn't spend too much time on it.
klauss
Elite
Elite
Posts: 7243
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:40 pm
Location: LS87, Buenos Aires, República Argentina

Re: WAY Down the road... Space walking?

Post by klauss »

What are you going after? (ie, which base are you trying to make?)

PS: it's customary to post screenshots for those that can't open the zip or the files inside
Oíd mortales, el grito sagrado...
Call me "Menes, lord of Cats"
Wing Commander Universe
CaptJack92a
Hunter
Hunter
Posts: 68
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2007 9:23 pm
Location: My House
Contact:

Re: WAY Down the road... Space walking?

Post by CaptJack92a »

Oh ,sorry this is a ship.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
log0

Re: WAY Down the road... Space walking?

Post by log0 »

Looks good, no uv overlap. The edge flow and seams could be a bit cleaner. It is maybe good enough for vs. I haven't really looked at vs models.

Optional:
I think you can go up with poly count. The one here is very crude. The few times I had to unwrap I tried to select contiguous areas(islands) and auto unwrap them, looked for where a seam(along which edge loop) would naturally occur. This of course requires clean edge flow(loops).

Pic of a selected and unwrapped uv island. Notice the edge flow issue at wing root. One could of course split it into two sections cockpit and body, have an additional seam there. But I think I'd still try to make the wing edge a single island.
Image

PS: I am sure you will know it already but anyways. The most important keys for mesh and uv editing: G[rab], R[otate], S[cale] .
CaptJack92a
Hunter
Hunter
Posts: 68
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2007 9:23 pm
Location: My House
Contact:

Re: WAY Down the road... Space walking?

Post by CaptJack92a »

Sorry, I'm not really following.
log0

Re: WAY Down the road... Space walking?

Post by log0 »

Please notice I am not a modeling pro. This is just the way I learned it.

When uv unwrapping you are trying to map a 3d surface onto a plane. Try to think of the surface as being made of fabric or steel sheets. This means you will get seams where sheets meet. The edges where they meet will be at places of high curvature usually(car body creases for example) to keep distortion low. The edges can be seen as loops, enclose a sheet. They simplify uv mapping and help defining the object shape(car creases, body lines).

As I said. I don't think it is a requirement for vs. But it helps with texturing imho.

Here a modified model with some seams(edge loops) marked:
Image
loki1950
The Shepherd
Posts: 5841
Joined: Fri May 13, 2005 8:37 pm
Location: Ottawa
Contact:

Re: WAY Down the road... Space walking?

Post by loki1950 »

I am tempted to split this topic as it i starting to go off topic :wink: a bit and moving it to user help as it seems to be becoming an unwrapping tutorial.


Enjoy the Choice :)
my box::HP Envy i5-6400 @2Q70GHzx4 8 Gb ram/1 Tb(Win10 64)/3 Tb Mint 19.2/GTX745 4Gb acer S243HL K222HQL
Q8200/Asus P5QDLX/8 Gb ram/WD 2Tb 2-500 G HD/GF GT640 2Gb Mint 17.3 64 bit Win 10 32 bit acer and Lenovo ideapad 320-15ARB Win 10/Mint 19.2
Deus Siddis
Elite
Elite
Posts: 1363
Joined: Sat Aug 04, 2007 3:42 pm

Re: WAY Down the road... Space walking?

Post by Deus Siddis »

Ultimately every VS forum thread evolves into a UV unwrapping tutorial. :)
CaptJack92a
Hunter
Hunter
Posts: 68
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2007 9:23 pm
Location: My House
Contact:

Re: WAY Down the road... Space walking?

Post by CaptJack92a »

Well, once I know how you want things unwrapped, I'll go off into another topic for submitted models and such.

My model didn't have many of those seams, I wonder if the uv mapping was just messed up during the transfer? I am looking at it now for distortions.
klauss
Elite
Elite
Posts: 7243
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:40 pm
Location: LS87, Buenos Aires, República Argentina

Re: WAY Down the road... Space walking?

Post by klauss »

log0 wrote: As I said. I don't think it is a requirement for vs. But it helps with texturing imho.
Marking seams helps create hard edges, which would otherwise be smooth-shaded when converted with mesher. It's not automatic, though, last time I tried. Marking the edges isn't enough to make the edges hard (though it's a start and it helps). You then have to split the vertices, which is a pain in the ass.

So though it's not something VS uses directly, you'll have to do it anyway.
Oíd mortales, el grito sagrado...
Call me "Menes, lord of Cats"
Wing Commander Universe
Post Reply