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digitaldamage
06-30-2003, 02:55 PM
...sort of.
I couldn't come up with a more fitting title, so i hope it does the job.

I have an everyday problem, it seems. You built the scene, and, lets say, you want to texture it now.

In this case, there are a few high buildings left, right and in front of the camera. Five floors high and, well, a bit old and weathered. Cracks in walls, rust running down of all sorts of things, that stuff.
So, for the most part procedural maps are not an option. The walls (polygons) are not individual objects, but most of the time one single bigger object. (which isn't really a problem, see No. 3 below) I cannot use box mapping because of non rectangular angles. I seems that it all comes down to planar mapping.

I estimate more than 100 faces which are needing single attention. This is for one building. There are at least four.

As i see it, there are not that many options.
1. Unwrap every wall piece, make a big texture, reassign.
2. "Sub-objecting" every needed face.
3. Detach faces. Apply Planar map. (essentially the same as No. 2)

Of course it is possible, but i fear that it will take ages to complete the texturing process.

The question i have is how are you going to texture geometry wich is rather simple itself, but is annoying due to the mere amount of it.

TIA
CapnPanic
06-30-2003, 03:03 PM
well i don't tknow that there is any easy way, but the good ol' UVW Unwrp modifier could help a bit.

some of it's auto unwrap stuff could probably make some of the tedious stuff a bit less so.

another option might be to detach objects that could be mapped quickly if only they were their own objects (like gutter down-pipes, windows, etc).

just a few thoughts off the top of the ol noggin :beer:
EricChadwick
06-30-2003, 03:11 PM
Another couple tjhoughts...

Animation or still shot? If animation, will certain angles not be seen? I'd ignore those, only mapping faces that are rendered. If animation, is there motion blur? (will hide a multitude of sins). Nighttime or bright sunlight?

I'd select the largest parts first, uv map them. Then I'd select all faces on sides of window ledges, etc. Map them all together with a tiled UV.

Also, maybe could use greeble for distant shots, with face mapping. Johannes Schlorb has a great tutorial for this...
http://www.schloerb.com/tutorial/greeblecity_1.htm
http://www.schloerb.com/tutorial/headline1.gif
digitaldamage
06-30-2003, 04:02 PM
It is a still.
(that may eventually change. Altough, it is not very likely at the moment. It is a matter of how much time i will have. So i tried to plan ahead a bit)

Auto unwrap is max 5, right? Iīm still working at 4. To do it by hand for every object is quiet time consuming. Hm. Maybe i can find a plugin for max 4 with a similar function.

another option might be to detach objects that could be mapped quickly if only they were their own objects (like gutter down-pipes, windows, etc).

Thatīs what i meant with "option 3". The wall pieces are their own objects. At least, i could treat them as that. Detaching and texmapping +300 wall pieces separately.
Oh well...

posm: thanks for the link. Very interesting. A bit too big in scale, maybe. :)

One question: what do you mean by a "tiled UV" ? Selecting more than one object and assigning an UVW map modifier to all of them?
EricChadwick
06-30-2003, 04:09 PM
Yes, one UVW MApping modifier, but on selected faces. Increase the U Tiling and V Tiling spinners to more than one (amount depends on the scale of your texture), use a tilable texture. For example a concrete texture with no seams on the edges, tiled maybe 20 times, might work well for the left/right sides of all the ledges below all the windows.

Here's a great image that might give you some ideas.
http://www.splutterfish.com/sf/gallery_view.php?photo_id=263&screen=0&cat_id=2&action=images
gaggle
07-01-2003, 09:22 AM
Doh, I got distracted by the pretty Metropolis image yesterday, and forgot to post :).

Anyway, I don't think it's been suggested yet: map everything from the camera?

Well that's a little brute-force, but you can soften things up by, say, cameramapping each building to a single texture, or something to that extent.

Obviously that works best for stillimages.. though, even if you need it for animation it might give you a working startingpoint. I'm thinking one could likely bake the textures into the mesh afterwards? Then "just" continue painting in the areas the animation uncovers.. if you have access to DeepPaint 3D you could utilize its "projection mode" to draw details from the weirdest angles, and pretty much irregardless of the UV unwrap (ie. automatic unwrap works nicely).

Just a ponder anyway, I might've missed some reason why this would never ever work.
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