Hi all,

Here's a snapshot of an Idea I was working on over the past two week. I started a while back, can't remember when exactly, but I found the file again and now Im' realy tring to get this one done and dusted. I haven't realy finished any models that I've started so I'm sticking with this one until it's completed. I must
Anyways, I'ld just like to know what anyone thinks of it.

Also I'd like some advice on something. I've textured the model using unwrap. Now, the way I went about this is.. first I selected parts of the model and unwraped them. Then selected other parts and unwraped these. Then I updated the texture using the plug-in and so on.....
Now there is a few unwraps and an up-date, a few more unwraps and an up-date, a fewmore and an up-date an so on....
This was a bit of a nightmare to texture 'cause one slip and I was loosing all the fases that I had selected, sometimes there were quite a few. Up-dating the texture was a bit tricky too let me tell you but I got there in the end Mind you, there is still a bit of cleaning up to do on the texture, not completly finished. The model is completly boned as well, though not skinned. I hope this works out ok. Then set constaints and the hopefuly animated.

When I load the file now I get a message stating that the object, model has alot of layers. Usual I compact these, but this time any ones left are textures, maybe 20 or so.
Would it be a good idea to compact all these or not? Its just that a few years ago(time flies) I remember that I had some problems with textures when I compacted the layers, models were loading with out textures or something like that anyway.

Help on whats the best way to do this would be great. And should I texture a model before skinning or after?

James

Plantman.jpg (80 Kb, 200 downloads) Plantman

Here's one more with shadows turned on.
Let me know what you think of it so far

Plantman_Shadowon.jpg (66 Kb, 154 downloads) Plantman2

Nice idea.

Are you using 3DC to unwrap with or an unwrapping tool/app.
Try saving the model out under another name and compact the layers...see if things still look and work ok.
For skeletal animations I usually just apply basic colours to start with. Then get the animations done, when I'm happy I do the unwrap.

Have you uwrapped everything to just one bitmap.

Bazza

Thanks for the help Bazza. I have 5 512x512 for the bark and another 5 512x512 for the leaves. Do you think it's a good idea to have this much or should I haved used less 1024x1024 ones. I used the unwrap tool in 3DCanvas.

James

Nice model and idea.

As for the size of the texture it is down to the use of the model and the size the model will be used at. For example if you are going to have Mr Plant running round a game but the model will never be bigger than 50 or 100 pixels high then you don't need a lot of detail in the texture but if you are going to zoom into a slow moving leaf which will fill the screen then a lot of detail in the texture is needed so a larger "unwrap" is needed (or several textures for the parts)

When you unwrapped the model did you overlap some of the UV points (eg - do all of the leaves use the same space or do some of the limbs ?)

How about posting the textures that you use ?

I think Alan's right here..it depends what you want to do with the model. Is it all one mesh.?

I would have thought you could unwrap this onto just one 512x512 bitmap and still retain very good quality.
Like Alan says ..all the leaves that are the same can be overlayed onto the same area of the map, so you just need to paint the one leaf.
The same applies to the Trunk/branch segments as long as they are of the same section.

Another way would be to just apply a bark texture to the branches using the brush tool and then just unwrap the leaves.

Bazza

Alan, I'll post the textures here shortly for ya The model isn't for a game but that's also a good idea I'm hoping to make a short animation with it, so there will be close ups and things.

quote: When you unwrapped the model did you overlap some of the UV points (eg - do all of the leaves use the same space or do some of the limbs ?) Sorry i'm not really understanding the question here.

Bazza, I thought of texturing the whole model with just 1 512x512 or 1 1024x1024., but the more I studied the thing, it seemed the way I done it was going to look better. Some of the leaves are facing different directions you see.
I think your idea of texturing the bark first withe brush tool is a very good way of going about it actualy, Then unwraping the leaves. Could be easier too. I'll post what I can shortly.

James

Fist up, the model is created from a single cube. Here's a wireframe...

Plantman_wire.jpg (77 Kb, 122 downloads) Wire

Here's all the leaf textures. There were actualy 10 of these, not five. . Five for the one side of the leaves and five fo the other side. I have tried to put as many unwraps as I could on one .bmp without having things look out of place... more stretched or shrunk, than the others.

PlantMan_unwrapLeaves.jpg (78 Kb, 153 downloads) LeavesTexture

Next, the bark textures...

Plantman_BarkTexture.jpg (75 Kb, 117 downloads) BarkTextures

lastly, the feet on a seperate .bmp

PlantMan_unwrapBarkfeet.jpg (78 Kb, 80 downloads) Feet

I will have a play with a quick tutorial tonight and post tomorrow/monday to try to help here...

Thanks Alan, I'll check back then then

I've now started the skinning of the bones to the model. I've done about half, but am getting an error on a certain bone. If I change the bone for a new one, the problem is still there.
It's an "error 91". The solution to this sometimes is downloading the mdac files. I tried this and halfway through the installing it states that there is no need to update or install this and says to cancel
If I accept to re-load the last file before the error, the model loads fine with the amount of skinning so far done minus the one it crashed on and no texture what so ever, and now the model is compact. This happens all the time . So I then try and save the file every 5 or 6 bones I skin so I can keep the texture. Well I'm back to have another look to see if I can fixs this bone thing.

Later.

James

Very sorry about the delay - my phone line died and I have been internetless and phoneless for since the 19th

anyway here goes...

UV MAPPING
What is UV MAPPING ?
Well I have been sat here trying to think of a good way of doing this for quite a while, in fact this is about my sixth start but I think I have a good way of describing it now

Pop off to your kitchen and grab a box of Corn Flakes.

Go on, stop reading, and grab a box.

Got one ?

Good, let’s start.

The box you are now holding, or more probably imagining, is made of a single piece of card folded up and glued into a box shape. You could take this box and carefully break apart the seams and unfold it back into its flat shape. Or you could cut each side of the box into separate pieces and lay them out side by side.

This is how I view UV mapping - to unfold/cut up your model so it is flat, enabling us to paint a texture onto this flat area that can then be re-folded/pasted back onto your model.

Simple isn't it ?

box.jpg (27 Kb, 112 downloads)

So in this example :-

The U,V of the top left corner of the front face is 0.66 , 0.14
The U,V of the top right corner of the front face is 0.96 , 0.14
The U,V of the bottom left corner of the front face is 0.66 , 0.62
The U,V of the bottom right corner of the front face is 0.96 , 0.62

Now our 3D software can use these UV points to paint the texture onto the correct face of out model.

uvmap.jpg (38 Kb, 108 downloads)

Lets take another simple example to show another aspect of UV mapping...

Imagine you have made a model of a house and it has several windows of the same design in it. You could position each of these windows to the same area of the texture map. This means that each of the windows will have the same part of the texture map “stuck” on them. Because we only need one picture of a window rather than 8 or 10 copies then we can use a larger part of the texture map - this allows for more detail but does mean that each window will be identical, not always a good thing.

house.jpg (45 Kb, 110 downloads)

Another example would be a model of a tree - if you overlap all the leaf uv points to the same area of your texture then instead of needing to draw out 100 leaf patterns , each of which would (wood ? ) be very small to fit onto our 512x512 texture map and have little detail, you could use maybe a quarter of our texture map to draw a reasonable detailed leaf.

Very nice tutorial Alan, well done.

On top of all that I see that I can also drop a jean's size just by eating a box of Special K.

Good tut, Alan.. makes it a bit simpler all in all.

Erm... Vulcan.. wouldn't it be better to eat the contents of the box.. I know paper doesn't have many calories, but... yuck!

Richard.