#mappings
6 messages in this thread
What would be the best way to go about applying complex texture maps
onto your 3D mesh. This is ambiguous.. okay, for example, if you've seen the
stereo set GIF or the chip set GIF uploaded by Kurt and Chris, you notice all
the little labels of text and things all over the front panel (on the chipboard
too).. well, what is the *best* way to achieve all that mapping? Is it best to
use one big GIF that covers all the labels on the front panel and hope that it
all matches up with the 3D mesh (for buttons and things).. or is it best to use
dozens of little 2D "labels" that have full opacity and texture on and where
you can move around to any location but would probably increase rendering time
because of the transparency aspect.
— Steve
>>Is it best to use one big GIF that covers all the labels on the front >>panel
….
NO! I've found from experience that you don't want to use big texture maps if
you can avoid it. I had an interior courtyard whose walls were going to be
covered with an accoustical material. As those walls were an collection of
exterior walls of four different buildings (we were enclosing the courtyard),
non of them were uniform, and the facades themselves didn't have a decent
repeat. So, I made as-big-as-I-could bitmaps at 1024 res in AAP of the
tilejoints and window openings.
Well, swap-city! Say the four maps were 1024×300 CELs or something. 3DS uses
height x width x 3 bytes for each map definition, so 4x1024x300x3 = 3.6Mb just
for my wall maps! This was my first 3DS project, and I only had 16Mb RAM, and
the floor was multi-level polished travertine, so I had some flat reflection
maps (eating up another large memory chunk), etc. Not fun.
I've since meant to go back and model those walls, but….
Dave
I'd say a single map is best. I've seen Jamie do it by networking two
computers, one with 3ds and one with AniPro. He renders the scene with the
mapped material, then loads the material bitmap in AniPro, edits the pixels,
saves the bitmap back out to the shared directory, and then re-renders the
scene until he gets exactly what he wants. The nice thing is, once you've got
the mapping coords. and material assigned, you don't have to touch them–all
you need to do is update the bitmap and re-render. If you're doing this on a
single machine, set your paint program into the Program menu in 3ds and shell
out to it.
– Jack
Jack:
>> set your paint program into the Program menu in 3ds and shell out to it.
FYI, Truevision TIPS works extremely well for this! And if it's used on a
dual monitor system, you can render a frame as your map to your Targa or
Vista, shell to TIPS (it doesn't clear the frame buffer on entry!) and
adjust it, then save it and exit right back to 3DS with no time lost!
Greg Pyros
Good tip, Greg.
– J
Steven,
It all depends on the model and the type of mapping that you are going to
apply. In the case of something like a computer chip, which is all one face, it
is fairly easy to take one texture map and apply it over the whole surface. In
the case of a stereo with all the buttons, each of the buttons are a uniqe
object or element, and as such have their own material and texture mapping
assigned to them.
-Brian