Mapping NURBS surfaces

[svenip]

Nurbs are already mapped with their UV. so you don't need to change or better you can't change them like with polys.

a good way to see the distribution is to put a map on it that helps you to see. you can download a few from the aw website.

[Calle]

Ah thanks. But how do I see the distribution when I want to paint the texture in photoshop? When I want to paint the texture for a polyCube it's easy to export a UV Snapshot from the UV texture editor. :wip:

Thanks

[kyphur]

Like svenip said, they're already mapped which is pretty cool. I personally enjoy using Polys over NURB's but I like NURB's in their simplicity to texture.

You should have something called "Interactive Texture Placement" or something like that in Maya that allows you to position the texture how you want it. Make the texture in Photoshop, add it to the geometry and in the Hypershade for the texture you should see a button that says something like, "Interactive Texture Placement" or something like that. Click on that, it'll give you a new tool and you can place the texture how you want on the surface by affecting the UV coordinates of the surface. You can also do it manually in there if you know the exact spatial coordinates that you want it to apply to.

Or, if you like doing things the easy way, :p then just go under the animation shelf and go to texturing> NURBS PLACEMENT TOOL. It'll give you a new little arrow that you can shove the texture around on the surface. You should see the UV coordinates and move them how you want. It's a bit weird at times with how it reacts to what you're trying to tell it so it might take a few tries to get it just right or you may have to click in just the right area to get the selection you want.



Kyph

[Calle]

Sorry about my bad english, but is it possible to output the mapping like this?

http://sonicated.net/cgtalk/mapping.jpg

If I want to place a red dot at a certain place on the surface... how do I know where to paint the red dot on the bitmap?

The Texture placement tool does'nt give me any help on this. :(

[kyphur]

But there's not a way that I know of to do that since NURBS are basically treated like a sheet of paper. U's going one way and V's going another. It's actually a lot simpler to use the NURBS for texturing than making a UV snapshot and painting them like that.

If you notice that when you create any NURBS Surface there's a seam that runs the lenght of it. It's like taking a piece of paper and rolling it to make a tube if you make a NURBS cylinder. Like when you create a sphere, if you click on INPUTS then you will see where it says, "START SWEEP". If you click on START SWEEP (not in the box where you feed the numbers to) and then you move your mouse left to right in the viewport while holding down the middle mouse button you'll see the sphere split along the seam. That's where the UV coordinates begin and end. If you make your textures in photoshop you can make them in the standard square format (512 x 512 or whatever) and just remember that where the edge ends on top is V and left to right is U of your NURBS surface. It's kinda (I'm stretching "kinda" here) like UV surface mapping just completely using the area in the UV Snapshot. Did that make sense at all?

Kyph

[Calle]

Thanks. :) I think I understood that. :) But is'nt it hard to paint textures when they are stretched all the time? For example. One painted dot can be small at one place on the surface and the same dot kan be huge at another place where the surface is stretched.

[svenip]

is usually go by and project textures first to parts of the surface and then convert them to file textures using the command. then i will have the stretched version in photoshop :). i know deeppaint etc does the same. but for those who don't have these apps it's a good way for stretching out things.

[kyphur]

Yeah, I understand what you're saying but all I can say is do a lot of preplanning before you start applying the texture. Take a look at how the isoparms stretch and are oriented on the surface. You can also make the NURB surface paintable with the 3D Paint tool, draw two lines, one up and one side to side, and then save the texture in the 3D Paint tools option box. If you have your project setup correctly then it should save it in your project folder in the 3DPaintTextures folder. You can use that for reference. That's the only way that I know you can do something like what you're asking.

Kyph

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