What is the key to Texturing?

[kahinj]

Hi Guys

Well I am going to ask a question that will probably sprout a billion replies. lol That question being, what is the key to texturing in Uru? My models that i've built often have a stretched and distorted kind of look to them and I really do not know how to texture. So Is there a specific way to do it? or can you do it multiple ways or... yeah. I guess I just want to know what the best methed is.

Thanks Guys

"kahinj"

[dendwaler]

A difficult question.

Yes, there are different ways to do it.
What is the best depends of what you want and have to texture.

The key for a good looking result is first the quality of your UV map.
And second the quality of the texture.

There are several options available in Blender resulting in diffrent uv map projections.
You have to learn to see which is the best option for which part of the object.
Seldom you can texture the "whole" object in one stroke.
In general you can say that every face needs to have about the same size as in the 3D view when viewed in the in the 2D UV map.

Learn to use seams to break open a closed object.
When it is a complex object normaly I first split it up in several parts, which i texture seperately,
even when i use the same texture for that individual parts.

Texture an object in an early stage, not when it is totally finished.
For instance, when you make a palm tree.
first model only one leave and texture it immediately.
Then copy the leave (or make use of an array modifier, combined with an empty to define the rotation. ) and all the leaves are textured,
because they will use the same small map which is less complex.

hat is in a nutshell my approche.
But really there are so many different options.

[kahinj]

Are there any good tutorials out there that would show me how to do that? I must admit I am still very much a noob when it comes to blender.

[dendwaler]

Besides what is already in our own wiki.
these are some good explanations.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Textures/UV
http://www.switchonthecode.com/tutorials/blender-tutorial-basic-uv-mapping
http://www.blender3dclub.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=77&theme=Printer
http://www.geeks3d.com/20090925/tutorial-discovering-blender-part-3-applying-uv-mapping/
http://vimeo.com/5667694

The last one is 45 Min Vimeo film, difficult for the beginner but very good.
It shows creation of a ‘realtime’ stone in Blender using the standard color and normal maps as well as detail maps for color and nomals.
The whole process is covered including:

•photo texture preparation in gimp
•tilable texture painting in blender
•modeling and basic sculpting
•uv unwrapping
•projection painting to fix texture seams
•material and detail color map
•sculpting and displacement mapping
•normal map baking
•detail normal map

[kahinj]

Great! Thanks for the tutorials.

[Nalates]

There are simplified texture tutorials for creating projection maps and baking to a UVMap for Second Life. How to use features in Blender are explained. What you need for Uru style ages is different than SL so it is not a recipe you can follow for your ages. But the tutorial will alert you to Blender features and ideas for working with projection and UV maps many miss. The way they describe the work is definitely for SL. But the work flow works for general use. When they say baking for SL Sculpty maps they are talking about what most think of as an actual UV texture map. You will need to make the mental integration…

Things like exporting the UVMap layout for use in Photoshop are a big help. Editing UVMaps vertices is another tool that many tutorials skip. Moving vertices in the UV allows one to add more pixels to an area to avoid the stretched look. The 3rd one above points out and uses editing UV vertices. The ones below show it in action.

Whatever, you can get pointers from all of them.

Tutorial #1
Tutorial #2: