Please help me with my fountain

[Aikijitsu]

This is really off topic, but I'd love to learn German some day. If some guy gets me mad, I can call him an ugly, fat pig in German, and he'll just say to himself, "What?" I see a lot of people speaking German, so it would be nice to learn it so I can speak to others.

Good luck with your fountain. After I learn blender, I start my Age. It''s going to have a ton of water in it. Water seems to cause problems a lot. I'll make sure to post a lot of water questions for you guys.

Good luck Perlenstern!

[Corvus]

Perlenstern, If you get an English answer here you don't understand, or if you have problems with other tutorials, I could try to translate it for you. My English is not perfect, but mostly I understand what I read.

[boblishman]

Unfortuneately Perlenstern, you have chosen quite a difficult object to start your Age with ... however, I will try and explain the best way to achieve what you need for the water to animate properly for your waterfall.

1) You must use a seamless texture for the water. This is a texture that has "matching edges" (i.e. the top edge matches the bottom edge and the right edge matches the left edge - rather like pattered wallpaper that you would hang in your bedroom - you cannot see the seam (or join) of the pattern.

I suggest you use the water texture from THIS page on the wiki - make sure you "save picture as" (and not "copy" or you will lose it's transparancy!)

OK ... so now you have a transparent, seamless texture ... but you need to UVmap it to your object. There are several ways of doing this, but to be honest, the quickest way would be to re-make the water object from scratch.

a) Go into overhead view (Press 7 on your numpad)
b) Create a cylinder (with no end caps )
c) Go into front view (press 3 on your numpad)
d) Press U (unwrap) and choose "Cylinder from view"

in your UV window you should now have a "box grid" .... make sure everything is selected ... and then press S (scale), X (x direction) and make it like the UV window in the picture below

uvmappingwaterfall.jpg (165.78 KiB) Viewed 3094 times

(you can see from the active face how the mapping is and that the normals (the blue lines) are pointing OUTWARDS)

(I would also advise you the make all your faces TWOSIDED at this point ... (especially as you will be able to see "water through water" - because of the circular design of your fountain)

now that the cylinder is mapped correctly ... NOW is the time to change the shape of the mesh to your water (as shown in the picture above). Your UV mapping will stay correct as you change the shape of your cylinder to "fit" your waterfall.

(Quite often it is easier to UVmap a BASIC SHAPED object BEFORE you make it its final (more contoured) shape. I sometimes find that easier than "unwraping" a (complex) mesh. Some things, like tree trunks (a cylinder), are easier to UV map BEFORE you deform the mesh into a more organic, irregular shape)

2) As for the speed of the water movement ... if you want it to move faster, then use less frames for the offset (e.g. in the wiki, it uses 800 frames for a complete offset of 1 ... this means it would take 26 seconds for the water to travel from the top to the bottom of your waterfall - which I am guessing is too slow. Reducing that 800 to 60 would mean your water would take 2 seconds to flow from the top to the bottom... because the frame rate in Uru is 30 frames per second.

3) Direction of the water: This depends on the UV mapping and the placement of your object. You can change the direction of the animation in TWO way:
a) make the offset a Y offset (instead of X). This will change the direction by 90 degrees
b) use a negative number for the offset (e.g. -1) instead of a positive one (e.g. 1) . This will change the direction by 180 degrees (i.e. reverse the flow direction)

(you may need a combination of a)and b) to get the water flowing in the direction you want)

This is not the ONLY way to achieve what you want ... but I think it would probably be the quickest for you (UV unwrapping is an art in itself!)

Good Luck !

[Perlenstern]

@ boblishman

I create my fountain before I heared something about animation. Now I think I have to create a new fountain. I don't use the texture from the wiki and never looked that it is seamless. For the next time I know to look for that.
If I create a cylinder and unwrap it in the way you told me....I never get a grid like you....did you subdivices yours ?
I create the cylinder, unwrap it, texture it, make the crroct UV Map and then I extrude the smaller parts on the top. Did I have to create them before UV Mapping....to get a grid ?

Thanks for answering

The Perlenstern

[boblishman]

sorry, I forgot a step:

After you have created the cylinder and gone into front view, use a knife cut to add the extra faces (shiftK/multicut/no cuts 5) about here

knife1.jpg (38.25 KiB) Viewed 3034 times

and press enter ...you will have this ....

knife 2.jpg (43.77 KiB) Viewed 3034 times

then you select all the faces and press U (unwrap) /Cylinder from view....


then you should have the grid

(sorry I forgot about this bit ... )

[Perlenstern]

Thanks for answering so fast. I'll try it later with this instruction.

I think I need a 24 hour hotline to you.......at beginning with Blender are so many questions.

The Perlenstern

[Christian Walther]

To unwrap your original object (instead of starting with a new cylinder and deforming it after unwrapping, as Bob suggests), the Follow Active (quads) option in the UV Unwrap menu could be helpful.

Another German speaker here who can help in case of language difficulties.

And there is kind of a 24 hour hotline here.

[boblishman]

whilst I agree with Christian that you could unwrap your exiting object using this script, I suspect that the time it would take you to both learn and understand creating a seam, active quads and so on (which you would need to understand before you could use this option) ... I imagine that it would be much quicker to start from scratch using the instructions above...

... this is the thing about 3D modelling and Age building ... there is always several ways to achieve the same (or very similar) results.

I am guessing that for Perlenstern (who says she is a beginner) ... that trying to use this option would be a bit like "running before she could walk"

... however, for more experienced modellers, bringing this option to their attention is a good thing.... as it often gets forgotten about.

[Christian Walther]

Well, in this case it works well without seams and without caring about the active face. And placing seams seems like such an essential part of UV unwrapping (and not hard to understand too?) that she might just as well learn about it now.

[Perlenstern]

Ok I'm going on to try all you gave to me.
And I was it myself who says that I'm a beginner, because I started with Blender 8 weeks ago. That's why I have so many questions.
I'll try the active quads in a few days.
So and now one small question:
What is the different to make a multicut or to subdivide the cylinder ? It looks like the same.

The Perlenstern