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Texture Artists, what do you prefer in models?

NapalmArsenal

NapalmArsenal

Distinguished
Contributing Artist
Lyrra Madril said:
When trim has a visible modeled sewing indent then I cut it loose of the main fabric and set it off to the side. If its flat in, you can leave it all together to give the texturist more options. Either way, separate material zones are a good idea! And for sanity sake .. name them something obvious like 'Cloth' and 'Trim' or 'Leather' , 'Metal' and 'Fabric'. I can't tell you how much time texture artists spend playing "Name That Thing!" on uvmaps.

If you have to make shells that overlap PLEASE name them with a number of the map they go to, like they did on V4. So you have 1_cloth and 1_leather and then 2_leather and 2_Buttons so you know that these things go to this map and those go to the other. I just spent a good half hour puzzling out a really complicated jumpsuit map with a dozen materials overlapping and it could have been so much easier with numbering.

Oh and do leave the fabric/leather shells proportionate to each other. Nothing is more frustrating to find that the sleeves need the fabric 100% scale and the body needs it at 58.6%. Again this is something that is tough to match up across seams and hard to work around. This is a garment that will get solid colours just to make the texturist not pull out their hair.

UVlayout does let you straighten out one or both edges of and mesh item, which is lovely for things like cords and bootlace and also ruffle and lace edging. Most lace textures are straight, or a tiling snippet to make a long straight piece. So the closer the uvmap is to that, the easier it is for the artist to get a nice sharp lace texture onto it. If the ruffle UV is too wiggly, then you are kind of stuck making plain cloth ruffles or coarse netting and hoping nobody notices the texture stretching a lot.

As for uv seams .. I try to match the seams of actual fabric cloth patterns where I can. This leaves texture seams where we expect to find them on clothing. If you can't do that, then try to get the seam in a harder to see place like inner leg, bottom of arm or the back of the garment.

Napalm Arsenal - funny you should say that :)

LM
Click to expand...
AMEN!! on the naming!!
 
Gadget Girl

Gadget Girl

Extraordinary
Contributing Artist
Just thought I'd say. I'm working on making a better UV for my vest. It's been a good learning exercise, although it's definitely not done yet. I've got some major distortion under the arms, I need to even out the size of the polygons there, they got way squished. I think I know how to fix it, but I also posted in the Blender help thread because there is probably a better way to do this than I have been. Still I have good progress on the back of the vest.

 
Miss B

Miss B

Drawing Life 1 Pixel at a Time
CV-BEE
Hey GG, I just posted a link in response to your query on my Blender Forums & Tutorials thread. I had asked the very same question on R'osity's Blender forum a few years ago, so I posted a link to that thread, because the responses I got were very useful.
 
Gadget Girl

Gadget Girl

Extraordinary
Contributing Artist
Okay, so trying to straighten the trim on my vest has done something very strange. (I did the straightening in Blender just for reference). If you look at the one little section of the trim you can see that there's some sort of stutter where several of the same polygons seem to be using the same part of the image map:



Here's what my UV look like, I put an arrow to show what should be those polygons. Any idea what's happening?



I'm not sure what would cause that, so I have no idea how to fix it. Thought anyone?
 
Glitterati3D

Glitterati3D

Dances with Bees
Yeah, that's the model. See how the edge loop is not straight and even? That is what is causing that in your UV map. You have multiple NGons there.

I am pretty sure that's an artefact of Marvelous Designer.
 
Gadget Girl

Gadget Girl

Extraordinary
Contributing Artist
Glitterati3D said:
Yeah, that's the model. See how the edge loop is not straight and even? That is what is causing that in your UV map. You have multiple NGons there.

I am pretty sure that's an artefact of Marvelous Designer.
Click to expand...

So you're right, the slightly odd geometry there is from Marvelous Designer, although everything is actually a quad, you just can't tell from the UV layout because you can't see all the vertexes. Here's an actual Blender screen shot of the UV layout:



Lyrra Madril said:
the item's UVs looks like it is symmetrical. Is that happening on the other side as well ?
Click to expand...

Nope, not happening on the other side. Whatever it is, it's definitely something I did in Blender while trying to straighten the trim. I went back and loaded the original geometry and the trim doesn't do that.

I suspect what I'm going to have to do is just redo the straightening in Blender, exporting out and checking the model each time. I went back and tried straightening just the section again, and it's fine.

Luckily, now that I've realized that I can select edge loops in the UV layout this will go way faster the second time around. I just kind wish I knew how I messed things up.
 
Gadget Girl

Gadget Girl

Extraordinary
Contributing Artist
Well, looks like I'm learning Blender, because that first attempt at stringing UVs probably took me at least 3 hours over several days (not including time to look up what I was doing). This time it took me only an hour, and no strange areas, which means now I can move on to rigging.
 
StudioMartillo

StudioMartillo

Engaged
Gadget Girl said:
Well, looks like I'm learning Blender, because that first attempt at stringing UVs probably took me at least 3 hours over several days (not including time to look up what I was doing). This time it took me only an hour, and no strange areas, which means now I can move on to rigging.
Click to expand...
This reminds me of something I learned about editing UVs in Lightwave. Use POINT mode. If you edit them in point mode, the polys move with the points. If you edit them in POLY mode the polys move but the points stay where the were. You can imagine what happens, total mayhem. Every once in a while I forget to go to POINT mode, but when the points dissociate from the polys they turn red. So there's at least a clue. But what were they thinking? If the software knows the points become disconnected can't it know to move them with the polys? One needs to pay attention to so many little details.
 
Gadget Girl

Gadget Girl

Extraordinary
Contributing Artist
So after all the wonderful advise, not only did I fix up the UV to make the trim straight, but having done so, I thought I'd try making a fancier trim than I had intended. It actually worked out quite well. Also it turns out that Blenders Export UV layout tool is pretty accurate. The texture I was using had a bit more of a gold bolder than I wanted, but I did find that if I didn't put the gold border on edge that showed on my template, it wouldn't show. So I really didn't need as big an extra space around the islands as I had made, but that's okay.


Of course, as soon as I added that image, I realize it bothers me that I don't have the gold edge on both sides of the trim, so some more work to do, but still, thanks for suggesting I straighten out the trim, life is definitely easier now.
 
Gadget Girl

Gadget Girl

Extraordinary
Contributing Artist
Pendraia said:
Looks great GG!
Click to expand...

Thanks, but some other issues have crept in. Also it was sort of going to be this one off texture in the set which struck me as kind of weird. I'm thinking what I might do to give my self time to really get it right is not include it right away, but have a freebie add on later, when I can really get things the way I want them.
 
Dakorillon (IMArts)

Dakorillon (IMArts)

Dances with Bees
Contributing Artist
Gadget Girl said:
Well, looks like I'm learning Blender, because that first attempt at stringing UVs probably took me at least 3 hours over several days (not including time to look up what I was doing). This time it took me only an hour, and no strange areas, which means now I can move on to rigging.
Click to expand...
Congratulations! and good job! It's always a great feeling when we conquer a new thing.
 
Dakorillon (IMArts)

Dakorillon (IMArts)

Dances with Bees
Contributing Artist
Gadget Girl said:
So after all the wonderful advise, not only did I fix up the UV to make the trim straight, but having done so, I thought I'd try making a fancier trim than I had intended. It actually worked out quite well. Also it turns out that Blenders Export UV layout tool is pretty accurate. The texture I was using had a bit more of a gold bolder than I wanted, but I did find that if I didn't put the gold border on edge that showed on my template, it wouldn't show. So I really didn't need as big an extra space around the islands as I had made, but that's okay.


Of course, as soon as I added that image, I realize it bothers me that I don't have the gold edge on both sides of the trim, so some more work to do, but still, thanks for suggesting I straighten out the trim, life is definitely easier now.
Click to expand...

Wow! I can already start envisioning uses!
 
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