CGTalk - laying out UVs, texturing help

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hopper2k

11-09-2004, 07:13 AM

hi.

i have been doing 3D for 2 years now, but i think the aspect of it i still need alot of help in is in the texturing department. i learned how to UV texture in maya just this year, but i kind of learned on my own, and now that i am seeing how my peers are setting up their UVs, it looks completely different than mine, theirs are nice and neat when mine are all over the place!

i have been searching for some tutorials online, but i haven't really been able to find one good one. i am currently working on a game character, my first one, and i know the key to a good game model is the texturing, so that is why i really need to get cracking when it comes to laying out my UVs correctly and making sure my texture looks good too.

the character is a clown ninja, and one important part of the texture will be painting the highlights of the muscles on his back suit. i know i need to look at real muscles and pretty much paint them the way i see them, and i know in photoshop to paint in layers and at low opacity. and yes, i am not the best photoshop painter/texture artist in the world.

so i guess i am asking for 2 things: (a)if you could point out to me a great and easy online tutorial as to how to layout UVs (preferably for a low poly model), and (b) if you could point out a great and easy online tutorial for painting textures in photoshop, preferably for a low poly game model.

thank you very much. and sorry if this question has been asked a million times, i searched stuff for UV texturing and laying out UVs, but couldn't really find anything specific for my needs.

Nicool

11-10-2004, 10:35 AM

Hi,

A - UV layout

I was in your case about UV layout until I decided to solve that problem. I feel it quite easy right now.
1- Let's thing your character mesh is colthes... Then simply unwrap the clothes patterns. As a fashion designer!
2 - When you've broken the mesh into pieces, move UVs so as to have no map distortions. Use a simple UV checker map such as a multicolor grid.
3 - Then you have to lay all your UV pieces. Place them into a square area (for real time application it goes from 128, 256, 512 to 1024). Scale an rotate the pieces so as to use this area as much better as possible. Try to keep the same scale for connected mesh piece to avoid painting scale problems. FOr a game modle (often made in 3 pieces (head, body, legs) you could give more map space to the head texture)

I've been discuting about UV layout issue for game model right here :
http://cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=164954

B - Texture painting

Can't really help you since I'm studying it too... All I know is that there are a lot of good info on polycount.com board. A lot of game texturers say taht it is better to paint texture in grey scale first to shape the volume (like height map) and color it then (even using layer specs).

Hope it helps !

ush

11-10-2004, 12:39 PM

Hi hopper2k,tutorials are good,but you can study a lot from finished works too.

www.realtimecg.com (http://www.realtimecg.com)

This link was introduced by the_podman in Game Art Design Forum recently.
(Thank you very much the_podman:) )
You might already know about this web_page,but you'll see great models and textures there.
You can see wires and textures so,this could be good samples and references for UV_layout and texturing I think.

By the way I sometimes use 3D paint tool to make reference of the painting.
Good luck.:thumbsup:

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