Gliese

[Berkut]

ehh, I kinda liked the old canopy more, oh well its up to you. Good progress on the texture though, nice touch with the assymetrical paintjob.

[star_creations]

hey Meph, since you are an expert on Unwrapping Texturing maybe you can help me.

When I create the texturing I want, then when I start to apply it, I select EDIT, to begin the mapping on the Model, but the texture is always blured, but never sharp and clean....hope that made sence.

Originally Posted by Meph

Hehe, yup, the more you get the hang of texturing, the more fun it becomes; I've spent many an afternoon, happily painting and drawing the large texture I used for the Olympic.

That's some seriously nice progress that you're showing mate. If I compare this pic to the ones with the black wings... I'm also liking the new hull.

[kborak]

dint worry berkut no where near done on the canopy

[kborak]

little update on the canopy and cockpit.

[Meph]

Originally Posted by star_creations

hey Meph, since you are an expert on Unwrapping Texturing maybe you can help me.

When I create the texturing I want, then when I start to apply it, I select EDIT, to begin the mapping on the Model, but the texture is always blured, but never sharp and clean....hope that made sence.

Hmmm two things going on here, one: you're working in the wrong order two: a simple option you can change when editing unwraps.

*side note: first give your to be unwrapped part an uvw unwrap of the closest fitting gizmo (plane, sphere, box etc etc)*

For the second (shortest explanation ) When you have the edit unwrap screen open, on the little bottom left meny bar you can click on 'options' and there again on the bottom left you can see the pixel size of your work area. There the max pixel size on one side is 1024 pixels so you'll either have to guess or calculate the other value a bit .

For the first one: If you do the above first and the decided the size of your 'work area' it's best place all your unwrappings neatly apart you have for instance the top and bottom correcly scaled and next apart, some smaller parts or other sides too. This way you create a template that's easy to paint on in photoshop. Vizualize it like this, you take a 3D shape cut every part loose from the rest and 'unfold' them so that if you would would print it out on paper and cut it out you could glue it together and have your 3D spare. The best way to seperate the mess of polygons and verteces I find to first roughly take the mess apart is with select 'polygons' and 'select element', the unwrap with a first applied uwv map modifier actlually is pretty 'smart' most of the time so that with 'select element' you can pick it apart in pretty large and correct chuncks, slowly piect it apart like this, then followed by puzzling the loose polygons to correct large chunks. Then scale everything to more or less to proportion of the model itself and pick 'tools/render uvw template' and set the colour for the seams also to pure white (standard fluo-green). For the pixel size, set your largest size to the amount of pixels you intend to paint on in Photoshop. Example: the left-upper flank section of the bow of the Olympic would have been roughly set to 1024x500 pixels in the edit unwrapper but exported as +-8000x4000 pixels. The 'guess ratio' button usually is acceptably accurate too. Click render and you get a white on black picture. Save it as jpg or png, import it in a new psd, invert it, take your time to manually and accurately erase all unecesarry verextes so you end up with a 'blueprint' of your shapes and modeled details like paneling etc etc. lock the layer, always keep it as your top layer and voila, you have the perfect template to start painting accurately and detailed. After you made and saved all your textures (diffuse, specular, bump, opacity etc.) go to max, make the material, assign the textures, assign the whole lot to your mesh, render and if necesarry, go back into the edit unwrap and finetune any errors...

I do know that this seems like and is a few hours work most of the time to do decently but trust me, it seriously pays off in the end. You really can go deep and detailed this way all in one go one one solid flow (for me usually a full afternoon a big texture of two maximum and/or perhaps a few smaller ones). And since the whole process is more or less in one go it allows mentally satisfying big chunk of work done with presentable results.

The better you get the hang of this the faster you'll work and the more complex shapes you'll take on, resulting in an even bigger payoff.
As an example; the bow section of the Olympic was first cut into: upper bow-left, lower bow-keel, front keel, front-keel-rim, bow 'wings', top bow section, bow aft section, and the landing pads in three pieces too. Several weeks later when I started mapping the engine pods, I took 1 big engine pod pod (one of 4 identical ones) as one gigantic piece, unwrapped it meticulously and textured that whole monstrosty in one go in a few hours while I spent days on the bow section!

Go for it guys!

[star_creations]

Originally Posted by Meph

For the second (shortest explanation ) When you have the edit unwrap screen open, on the little bottom left meny bar you can click on 'options' and ther again on the bottom left you can see the pixel size of your work area. There the max pixel size on one side is 1024 pixels so you'll either have to guess or calculate the other value a bit .

BINGO!....thats was was wrong, thanks bro....I finally got a sharp image...ya...

[star_creations]

Originally Posted by kborak

little update on the canopy and cockpit.

Great work, can you give us a close-up shot of that cockpit.?

[kborak]

@star no probs man Ill give you later on today

[kborak]

ok I swear I ment to get that render up before I went to work....but here I am at work. Ill get a better look at the cockpit up after work star. Im off at 12 my time so 9 for you.

[kborak]

Wow sorry bout not getting these up when I said I would. Started a new job and Im trying to nurse my dog through parvo. Its been hectic. Heres some shots of the cockpit.