help me! re:uvwUnwrapping-challenge #7

not sure if this helps but goto [url]http://www.3dbuzz.com[/url] there are alot of VTM (video training modules) for 3dsm not sure what version have a look around and find the ones u need for unwrapping. You 1st need to register to d/l

unwrap the parts into the blue box thing in the inwrap window.

Move that sheet over to the side so it fits in the same sized area next to the Blue box boundary.

Fit the rest of the pieces into the blue box boundary

To export; do one sheet, then move them over so the other sheet fits in the blue box. ttextporter only exports whats in the blue boundary box.

To apply 2 materials. Make a multisub object material

Select Polygon and select the whole model. scroll down to Material ID and make that 1

To make the other material ID on your model go to unwrap window. Select one sheet then press "Select Face" In the modifyer stack under Unwrap UVW.

Collapse stack

Select polygon mode, this will then have the polies already selected. Scroll down till you see set material ID. Make this ID now 2.

In the multi sub-object, load your textures in. apply to your model. If the textures look broken, swap the materials around on the Multi sub object. When that happens it just means you have them on the wrong material id. Swapping them over in the material editor will fix that.

You may need to move your UVW's again in the unwrap window to match them to the texture you exported, as when you were exporting you were moving your UVW's to the Blue boundary box. When moving your UVW sheets in and out of the box, hold down shift and drag, this will only move it in one direction, helping to keep them on the same horizontal plane :)

I hope that helps. I hope its legible o_O

after many times moving the uvs back and forth to export in texporter, i finally spoted an option to select which id you want to export. so if you have your ids defined before you begin unwraping, you can unwraping both in the same space and switch between them any time.

to break down the process I usually take:

-make a multi/sub material with different obvious colours (or the base colours)

-apply the mat id's on the mesh in the right place

-select by mat id's and detach to seperate objects to seperate the maps (just for the purpose of having seperate unwraps for each id)

-unwrap each id into their proper respective blue boxes

-after you're happy with the unwraps, attach the objects back togethor and weld all verts at a .001 or lower threshold (unless there's specific areas that need to have verts sitting on top of each other un-welded)

-texport wires (white edging) and blocking (solid whites for masks to keep the map clean) by mat id's.

-texture!

-assign the respective maps into the proper id's on the multi/sub

oooooouch my head is going to explode!
...thank you for the tips, I think they might make sense as a progress with the unwrapping and have the program open infront of me :)

I think a simple way to say it is that you need to detach half the polys to create 2 separate meshes, then apply a seperate texture to each mesh, then re-attach them. Is this right guys?

I didn?t have a clue what to do either, and I?m still not sure if it was the right way to do it. But the way I worked it out was to make a simple cube mesh, unwrapped the 6 sides, packed 3 sides into one space in the edit uv window, and the other 3 sides packed into a different space, then selected one of the 3 sides and detached them (creating 2 meshes). I could then apply a separate texture to each of the meshes, then re-attach them with 2 separate textures showing successfully on the one mesh.

Experimenting with a simple cube made it a whole lot easier to understand what I was doing; so then it was easy to do to my character model. I don?t know if it was a good way to do it or not (seems too simple - I must be doing something wrong [:P]), but it worked in the end.

But I still don?t understand all this multi/sub object stuff?

Palantir: if you use material ID's and multi-subobject texture.....
(in material editor 3dsmax click the 'Standard' button up the top right corner to bring up a list which will have the multi-subobject option there)
......then you wont have to spilt the model up and apply two different textures.

Ofcourse if you are making your texture mirrored then you will cut the model in half and unwrap one side, Mirror and copy then stick it all back together.

1) Setup MultiSubobject material with 2 materials - call 1 HEAD / the other TORSO ( ow whatever )
2) Make Model
3) Unwrap model into pieces
4) Pack pieces into 2 squares in uvw window.
5) Apply Unwrap UVW to Model and hit Edit to Open UVW window.
6) Select over 1 of the squares in the UVW window - the corresponding Poly should be highlighted red in your viewport.
7) Set the selected polygons to Material ID 1 ( you can do this way down in the Polygon Properties Section ( Over to the right ))
8) Rince and repeat from step 6 with *OTHER* square of pieces except set the ID to 2.
9) Texport Wireframes and Paint Texture, you should have 2 texture sheets now call them the same as your material - HEAD & TORSO.
10) Apply each texture to the corresponding material in the multisub object.
10) Apply Material to Model.
11) If its all screwy - you might have got the id's backward in which case swap them around.

Thats about it - JohnN if your in some real Strife pop me an email and ill send some screenshots over to help.

this might sound compicated, and there have been said several good ways of solving yuor problem above, this is just meant as an explanation as to how material ids work

when you create a mesh it has one material id by default. if you select faces and drag a material on to them, they will be automatically asigned a unique material id. if you then select different faces and drag on a differnt material they will in turn get a different material id, and so on for as many materials you drag on to faces.

if youthen select a blank material slot in the material editor and useing the eye dropper select the mesh a 'multi sub-object' material will automatically be created containing the two materials applyed to the mesh. so basically a mesh can have any number of materials assigned to it, and a 'multi sub-object' material is just a way of organising them (as you can adjust the materials in their own material slots if you want).

you can set up material ids manually by selecting the faces you want then setting the material id number at the bottom of the edit poly/mesh roll out thing (forget what it's called - ive been suing maya lately). whatever number you put in here will correspond to the number slot the material sits in in a multi sub material.

so i usually set my ids manually then create a multisub material with the two materials in the right slots, then aply that to the mesh. easy.

in the uv editor you can choose to display specific id, or all ids.

if that was confusing, ignore me [:)]

That was good LiveWire. Thanks for all that info guys, that?s cleared it all up for me. I expect JohnN will be fine now also.

I sure wish this thread were here a few weeks ago when I was trying to work it out. I found it surprisingly difficult to find anything useful online.

thanks for posting replies everyone. I've spent what seemed to be an unproductive afternoon re-reading all the posts trying to get something to work, but finally I think I have cracked it :)