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Guys,
I’m often looking for ways to improve my workflow in 3D. Having spent a couple of months messing around with Maya, I’m reverting to Max (in conversation with a professional games modeller, he compared using Maya for games as ‘driving a Ferrari in a traffic jam’)…
With that in mind, I’ve a specific question regarding our favourite sub-process, the UVW unwrap.
Specifically, I’d like to create building that has multiple storeys that will contain identical UVW information (i.e. a block of flats), and I’d like to avoid have to map each face for each storey. Is there a way to speed up this process?
Can I, for example, create one storey, UWVUnwap the co-ordinates, collapse the stack, and then duplicate the verts to create, say 10 storeys (and finally, weld all the verts to make one solid model). Would I then be able to remap the odd plane to a new place on the bitmap (so as to create alterate windows, to avoid overly obvious repeats)?
Anything to avoid having to map every face!!!
Thanks in advance,
Lewis
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(in conversation with a professional games modeller, he compared using Maya for games as ‘driving a Ferrari in a traffic jam’)…[/quote:d542064894]
Thats cause hes a Max user (prob longtime) In work its divided – Max users think Maya is not great – “oh you cant do this feature in Maya…Max is great” – at which point he Maya artists demonstate how easy it is to do it…..
I like Maya more
On a semi related note – Maya 6.5 appears to be brillant. Boolean even works as you always wanted it to!
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Boolean……*shudder*
Anywho….not sure Lewis, the method you suggested should work. Never tried anything like it before, so not to sure.
At least for something like a building it shouldn’t be so complicated as to cause a load of problems. -
Thats cause hes a Max user (prob longtime) [/quote:77d11d8d9a]
Perhaps. Perhaps not. My dad does drinkn’t Pepsi. Not because he’s a longtime Coke drinker, but because he doesn’t like Pepsi.
I am still evaluating it (Maya, not Pepsi), and I really want to love it. Some of the features, I dearly love already (The Hotbox, for example, looks like it could prove a real time-saver).
However, I sometimes look at the interface, with its multi-layers of shelves, buttons, flyouts, tabs, nodes and menus and wonder if it really needs to be so complex, at least for game purposes?
Ideally, I’d like to be pretty nifty with both!
Dave: How would you tackle an object that had repeating textured geometry? Each face by hand, then weld them to the same place on the bitmap?
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My dad does drinkn’t Pepsi. Not because he’s a longtime Coke drinker, but because he doesn’t like Pepsi.[/quote:d68ce10736]
Ah, but what if he drank Pepsi overcame his dislike and became a long-time Pepsi drinker, would he still want a coke??
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what if he drank Pepsi overcame his dislike and became a long-time Pepsi drinker[/quote:685c233458]
Good point Damian. Just so this analogy continues to make sense, is Softimage ‘Dr. Peppers’ or ‘Fanta’?
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I think generally Max is the program of choice for game developers. Maya is used a lot for special effects for tv productions etc.
Lewis,
It depends on what its for, the easiest way(obviously) is to just instance the geometry. But it sounds like you need the model to be one piece. So in that case, I would probably copy the faces/verts the required number of times, weld them to create one model and then apply a UV and unwrap it. Render to texture. Then just paint the texture in photoshop, and duplicate this texture onto the various levels of the unwrapped texture I just rendered.
There is probably a better way to do this, as I said, I have never really tried it!Maybe you could also just model, and texture the one level. Convert to editable poly(delete the top(roof) and bottom poly so the clones will weld together properly), clone however many times. Attach them to each other, weld the appropriate verts. Then just fix the now non-existant roof at the very top by using “Create” to add a new poly at the top. Then render to texture to get your new, unified texture and see i that works.
If it were me I would just experiment with these various ways of doing it and see what works/doesn’t. Also, maybe a multi-sub object material is the way to go.
Maybe Pete would have some better ideas on this one?
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Hi boadle
I think I may have a maxscript lieing about for this.
Let me have a look tonight (Will ask some friends as well)
Cheers
Ronan -
This is probably a handy link for any Indie developer using a portal based system
http://www.maple3d.com/GLB3Page.htm
I use to use this script. I can be worked with Torque, and other engines.
Boadle it does have a flooring system, and I believe since its BSP rule based it will automatically UVW, or so is my belief, been some time since I looked into it.
I will post more when I get home, may be worth a look until then.
{Edit}
Home now
Here ya go boadle the simplest way with no scripts or nothing
Map one story as usual. Clone and place 2nd floor. UnwrapUVW 2nd floor. Move uv left/right/up/down/flip etc. Repeat for other floors. Just make sure that brick lines match from one floor to the next. That’s the most difficult part.
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I thought Lewis wanted it to be 1 object + 1 texture, not multiple objects?
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Great advice all. To be honest, I hadn’t even thought about simply duplicating the storey and retaining it as multiple objects. I guess once I group the entire object together, it shouldn’t make a difference (as long as the verts are in the perfect positions).
Thankyou one and all.
L.
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Dave’s advice is sound Boadle, model one story and unwrap it, then clone the geometry as many times as you have floors in your building. You can still weld up the verts to make it one object, and all of the UVs of each floor will be shared so you should get good texture resolution on each floor. If this is for real time purposes you’ll want to watch your texture resolution so be aware of this if you’re using render to texture. If you want to give variety to a few windows you could always place a quad over the area and unwrap that seperately to place the texture variation on it.
Alternatively, if your building is the same shape the whole way up you could try tiling a texture on much simpler geometry to achive a similar effect and maybe save on polys??
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I never even thought of simply tiling the texture!
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Can you tile a UVWUnwrapped texture? Are the results managable?
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Nah, it would have to be wrapped I think.
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