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Sonja, can you upload a screenshot of what you are doing and the msg box you get? You can PM me so we don't take up the thread getting you sorted out unless others are having the same problems? Also, PM me a copy of the image you are trying to load into FF. I'll see if I get the same problems. I'm thinking, though, it is possible something happened during install and something is missing. One possiblity is to try uninstalling and reinstalling FF to see if the problem persists.
edit: I forgot to ask if you are using as a stand alone product or if you have it as a plugin in your copy of Photoshop Elements (was is Elements you had?). Not sure if the difference is contributing to the problem or not.
Just a quick render to show that I do my homework too....sometimes!
Jack...or anyone who knows, I went looking to see if I could figure this effect out, and it has me stumped.
Tiling on 2 different parameters? I only see one option to adjust tiling way down near the bottom in the materials tab. Horizontal and vertical tiling. I tried adding maps to metallicity to see if new parameters popped up, but nothing happened.
Can anyone shed any light?
Thanks!
"D"
It is an Iray feature and click on the image (control map or diffuse) and select Image Editor. The tiling options will be there.
Ahh! Got it!
: )
Thanks mjc!
Just checking to see when we might be getting another great installment of DestinysGarden's texturing lessons. BTW, how was the trip? Are you back yet? Hope you had fun!
Sorry to be MIA. InaneGlory and I are working on a Really Big Thing, and he always ends up waiting on me to finish my part.
Trip was good KM. My 90 year old grandmother is getting hard of heariing and is prone to asking the same question 5 times in a row, because either she didn't hear the answer or didn't remember it from 2 minutes ago, so it was very good to go see her now. Thanks for asking, and thanks for hitting me over the head with the reminder to get back to this thread. I need that sometimes.
Great pic Kevin. He looks ready to get some summer sunshine.
Fantasy tower part 1 - looking at UVs. Thanks again to MDO2010 for letting me use his model for this example.
It is a good idea to get a texture template for any model you are working with, and they are not always included with products, but have no fear. We can make them. All we need is the object file. Most recent content purchased for use in Daz Studio does not have the .objs as all the needed info is included in the data folder. Simply load the item into your scene in Daz Studio, make sure the item you want to work with is the only thing in the scene, and go to file/export. Make a name for your object and save it in a place you can find it again later. You get this dialog box.
I have selected the No Maps option, as I am going to be making my own. I want to also point out the Collapse UV Tiles option, because the Genesis 3 figures have their UV maps spread out in a long line, and depending on your paint program, you may need to collapse them in order for you program to read it.
To get a texture template, you need a UV program of some kind. UVMapper Classic is free, and will suit our needs for generating a template. UVMapper Pro is the bells and whistles paid version. You can get either one here. http://www.uvmapper.com/index.html I'm going to be using the Classic version for this part, as it really is all we need for the two things it will be used for. Of course, use any alternate software that you like if you have it.
In UVMapper Classic, go to File/Load Model, grab the object you just exported, or the original object file if you have it. A dialog box comes up showing some base statistics about the model, and click OK. Then all you have to do is go to File/Save Texture Map. (Mark said the UV is not going to match the results from the Fantasy Tower tutorial, as he changed them in Blender.)
Next step, save the template at whatever size you need and click OK. 2000x2000 or 2048x2048 is a good size for most props and small models as you can get pretty good detail while keeping the file size small. If you are doing a skin texture for a human, you probably want to go to the 4000x4000 size.
Quick sum up of the above: If you have the .obj open it in UVMapper Classic, or similar, and save texture map. If you don't have the .obj file, export one first from Daz Studio.
Fantasy Tower part 2 using shader presets
Looking at the model in DS, this model has good material zones, and would well with shaders. All the surfaces are nicely labeled, and the different colors make it easy to see what is what. Well done Mark.
I'm going to use my fist shader set for this part DG Shader Essentials which is for 3Delight because I don't have any architectural shaders for Iray yet. (I'll get right on that.) I'm going to guess everyone knows how to use shaders, and that your shader preset library has multiple useful things in it. The quick sum up for posterity, select the item in the scene tab, select the material in the surfaces tab, browse your content for the shader preset you want to use, and double click to apply it. If the shader doesn't apply, check that the item really is selected in the scene tab. I make that mistake about 5 times a day, because sometimes the materials will still be visible in the surfaces tab, even if the base object is not selected in the scene tab.
I'm rambling, sorry.
Using whatever shaders you have handy, select something suitable for each surface. Here is what I came up with. 3Delight render, and Iray render, using the same 3Delight shader presets, with a distant light added. (Sheesh, the Iray render looks so much better.)
If this suits your needs, and you don't need to redistribute the texture maps, you can call it done at this point. The object is now "textured."
I know, we didn't really texture it ourselves, we just used some one elses textures. Next step, putting textures on the template we made.
Fantasy tower part 3 texturing with resources
The first thing we need to do is determine what parts of the texture template correspond to what parts of the model. I grabbed a UV checker from online, and layered in my image editor at 50% opacity, so I can see both the labeled grid and the wire frame. It looks like this.
Here are a few renders I did to illustrate the point. First one is using the texture template in the base color channel, second is using the UV checker, and the third is my combination of the two.
I have sectioned off my template and use color blocks to show the different parts, so now we can see what parts of the model should have what kind of texture.
The next step is both the easiset and the hardest. It is one of those "minutes to learn, lifetime to master" sort of situations. All you have to do is put a block of whatever sort of texture you want over the template in the right place. Easy right?
Let's tackle this in sections. The orange part on the left are the windows, so I filled them in with light grey. The dark blue part in the upper right corner, and the grey strip below that are metal, so I filled that in with dark grey. We don't need a texture map for these parts as metal and glass mostly rely on the surface settings.
The orange part is the door, and the purple part is the beams, and I'm thinking wood for those. I grabbed this picture I took of tree bark, pasted a part of the middle section, shrunk it way down, and duplicated it to fit.
For the rock and the tower walls, I found some seamless tiles that I had made previously from photographs.
The template is filling up. Here is a new render to see how it is coming along.
Wendy, thank you so much for sharing what you did with your model. I think you are on to something with making the roof red tin. I tried a scalloped paver on the main roof, and it was a no go.
Fantasy tower part 4 - finishing it up and adding details
So here is what I'm going with. Two more seamless tiles made from photographs for the roof sections, and I copied and shrank down a small part of the main tower brick for the chimney section.
And the render.
It is a decent start and every part of it needs some kind of help. Back soon to finish this off.
A few hours later, coming back to the thing with a fresh eye. I'm really loving the brick on the main tower, and the battered wood door. The rest of the textures are OK, and can probably be fixed up with some color changes to make everything blend together better. Bump maps first though.
Here is how the bump map turned out, and the brick took a while. I really am obsessive/compulsive about grout lines. To get the bump map for the rest of the textures, I did the thing you should never do, and desaturated the diffuse map, and increased the contrast. It won't hold up for close-ups, but for the sake of time, on a model not really meant for close-ups, this will work.
Final map and the render.I used brightness/contrast, and a bit of colorization on the roof tiles, the wood, and stone. I also added a greenish color to the stone in the surfaces tab.
Last step if you feel like doing it. Using the texture template as a guide, make a new layer and grunge it up. Here is an example, and of course, what the render looks like when the grunge layer is added to the final base color map.
I think that covers the basics. I'll let everyone know when the zip of practice material is ready.
Woot, hope you had a wonderful trip! Will try and work my way through this, this week. Probably won't get to it until Thursday or Friday. But really excited
I made the tower and added it to a house on the rock. Texturing was quite easy apart from the tower roof, which I couldn't get tiles to look right on, so I made it a tin roof.
Welcome back , I hope you had a wonderful trip :)
Welcome back Destiny! Are we just to use any model to do the texturing or was there a d/l link for the fantsy castle obj that I missed, did n't see anything so thought I would ask in case anyone else was wondering also
Thanks for all the welcome back messages.
Kharma, you can use any model. I'll see about putting together a zip of the model with some textures to practice on.
Hello Destiny! Welcome back!
I've been watching this thread hoping for an update. I checked through my stock of props of stuff, and found this tower model. It's only $1.99. If I remember right, it came with a tutorial that some people may have picked up when it was free, so they may already have it. Here are the links.
http://www.daz3d.com/slaying-the-dragon-bundle
http://www.daz3d.com/cyngen-epic-dragon-s-tower
I also looked on the product page, and the templates are available for the tower model free. I picked them up and hope to take a shot at reworking it some time soon. (hockey game to night, so...)
Hope this helps...
Hey David, I defiantely have the Dragon Tower, and all the same principles can apply to that model too. I'l do a small walkthrough if needed.
I'm going to put together a zip of the Fantasy Tower model, as Mark has given permission, and a few textures to play with for those that would like to try it out. I'm going to have to get to that tomorrow, as well as finishing off the rest of the texturing tutorial. I got distracted by about 6 inches of snow in my driveway that appeared in the last 6 hours that I had to deal with before it stacked up any higher. Gotta love the spring snow, but it is par for the course in northern Minnesota.
Great! Looking forward to it...
6 Inches of Spring Snow!? Wow...that's more than we got the whole winter, I think...
My apologies ahead of time for the way some of the UVs are laid out BTW. Following the fantasy tower modeling tutorial was my first time really modeling anything and when I re-unwrapped everything in Blender later I was just starting to learn how that process worked too. If I redid it now, knowing what I've learned since then, I would have taken more time, laid things out a little more square/neatly, paid more attention to where textures were stretching and done it with fewer seams so that tiling textures could be used more easily on more of it. The modeling part is getting to be fun for me now (after many fits and starts) but UV mapping takes a lot of practice and needs some thought and more patience than I usually have.
Oh well, you live you learn.
Well since we are all hear to learn, its nice to now that other people started at the beginning too lol.
Would it be possible to get a walkthrough on creating good UV Maps? That's an area that I'm having trouble wrapping my head around.
Uhm maybe. I know a good UV map when I see it, and I know what I would change on the UV map for the Tower. If you want to know how to unwrap something, I'm not the one, but I can go through a bit on how to lay out the islands on the map to help out in texturing.
While there are a few things that are common for most unwrapping tools, a lot of what and how depends on the tool being used. So any discussion on unwrapping would, because of that, tend toward being tool specific.
So that is about all that can be done without getting to into the specifics of any particular tool. More than that and you probably would need to hunt down tutorials for your tool of choice. Myself, I mostly use Blender...
That would be fantastic!
As mjc1016 mentioned, I can track down tutorials on the "how", I just need to better understand the "what" and the "why".
+1 to that!
@DestinysGarden - if you want to use the UV map for my tower and tell everyone what you wish or would prefer was different, I won't be offended by a critique of it.
It's definitely something I am still learning and I agree that it would be helpful to hear what makes a good or bad UV map from the perspective of someone who knows texturing as well as you.
So the textures don't have to fit onto the uv map perfectly? As long as the item that is to be textured is completely covered? Here I thought I was going to have to fit it to each piece to be textured exactly and was think wow, that's going to take forever! But if I can just put a square over it, THAT I can handle easily enough.
MJC has the right of it, and that the unwrapping method is certainly very dependant on the tools used. My husband uses a combination of Silo, which is what he uses for modeling, and UVMapper Pro. I have unwrapped things in Hexagon, but that was a few years ago. I am fairly competent in moving the UV islands around in UVMapper Pro. The what and the why I can absolutely ramble on about.
Here is a 20 minute quickie on a new layout for the Fantasy Tower. I'll include the original model, and my new UV when I get everything together.
The biggest change I made was to select the Tower and Rock Base and change the map to Cylindrical as shown in the screen shot. The program gave me what is shown. The best part is only one seam to deal with. The next big change, and this is something I am probably over sensitive to, was rotate the beam section so that if it was being textured in a wood, like the door and door frame, the wood grain would all go in the same direction. I hope that made sense. A standard tip, group the parts of the model that will have the same material close together on the texture map.
After those three larger changes, the rest was minor. The chimney section was tiny, so that got sized quite a bit larger, and I increased the size of the beams, door and door frame. As a texturer, empty white space on the map are pixels I don't get to use. You want to fill up the map with the largest sections possible. Get close to the edge, but not too close. My guidline is to shoot for about 5-10 pixels between islands and the reason for this padding. To answer Sonja's comment, no you actually don't want to get too close to the edges of the UV lines because if you do, you will have seams, or white gaps on the texture, and they do show up in the render. Most 3D painting programs let you set the padding to a desired number of pixels, and if you are textureing using your image editor, you want to create your selections with extra room around it.
It is very much like solving a puzzle, and it is a delicate balance between filling the space and leaving room to work with.
One thing to remember...if you have 6 pixels between the islands, it will be 'split' between each section...so if you have an island on the left and one to the right of it with 6 pixels between them, that only leaves 3 pixels for each side.
Yup, listen to MJC. I can tell he has UVmapped more things than I have. Thanks for pitching in.
So I did a quick slap down of the same textures on the new UV map. Would you look at that, I completely hosed it! LOL.
I didn't proportionately size my new cylindrical shapes, and the textures are super stretched sideways. I'll fix that, but it proves the point that much of this trial and error, and never be afraid to make mistakes.