Help - Unfolding 3D models for texturing

[DaddyHoggy]

As I have to teach AC3D at work I have decided to stick with it for the moment and keep building potential Oolite Models (having read the HowToAI wiki I have run away screaming from that for the moment for Tycho8 oxp).

In the tutorials I've seen on 3D modelling apps like Wings seem to have a methodology for unwrapping objects in such a way that they go "flat" and therefore textures can be neatly aligned to the poly surfaces. (i.e. a cube unwraps to six squares in a t-shape, a cylinder unwraps to a series of long rectangles with triangles on either end) - however, AC3D doesn't appear to have this feature natively in its Texture UV Editor - I can grab single or multi polygons (even whole shapes) and the work out the best projection to view them from and move them around on the real estate that is my texture map, but this seems horribly in efficient and prone to errors (especially matching edges).

Ideally what I want is this "flat" shape so I can use this as the template to actually build/create my texture inside the edges of the unfolded polygons.

Given that AC3D doesn't do this, but it can export objects to quite a few other formats (http://www.inivis.com/features.html) would it be worth installing Wings3D, exporting out of AC3D, into Wings3D and the getting this flat projection for my texturing?

I know I could just learn how to use Wings3D, but as AC3D is the University's 3D modelling tool of choice (we've written lots of in-house apps that make use of the .ac format so were not likely to change) so for the most part I'm going to have to stick with that.

Any advice, help and/or suggestions greatly appreciated.

DH (trapped between "hobby" and "work")

[Killer Wolf]

i use ultimate unwrap http://www.unwrap3d.com/u3d/index.aspx

one thing you'll find tho (at least, i did!) is that proper unwrapping is a real arcane process. UU has a bunch in inbuilt unwrapping algorithms (if that's the right word) like Box unwrapping, planar, cylinder etc. there's times you'll get excellent results, there's times you'll get a jumbled mess. cubes and simple geometric shapes unwrap great, but once you get into complex things like people and ships, you'll find you're going to have to do a lot of the leg work yourself. For my winged ships like the Diamondback, i had to do a load of planning and selecting, separating stuff into simple groups etc, and even then i had a few quirks : if you look at the normal map for the dorsal area you'll see tht it unwrapped most of it fine but hoyed out a few polys in a random place - i ended up just dragging them close to the dorsal area and was able to paint over them as fortunately they weren't in an are that had much detailing.
gist of the post is, there's a wad of unwrapping utils out there, but don't go expecting magical results from them w/out a bit of work by the user.

[JensAyton]

As Gauss pointed out, there is no general way of mapping textures that produces “good” results (low distortion and reasonably low waste). Hence, every practical approach is a kludge.

[DaddyHoggy]

As Gauss pointed out, there is no general way of mapping textures that produces “good” results (low distortion and reasonably low waste). Hence, every practical approach is a kludge.

How terribly disappointing!

[Griff]

Disney have this ptex thing they've put out as open source, not sure how it works exactly, apparently you don't need to assign UV's (or if you do it's all 'behind the scenes' as far as the texture artist is concerned), It's not going to be any use for games, or the realtime stuff you work on DH, but if you're rendering out animations it might be worth keeping an eye on to see how it develops, the program 3dCoat supports it apparently, or you could get your bosses to buy you a licence for 'mari' when the foundry bring it out.
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheFoundryC ... A3441FBEC2 mmm, mari *griff smiley drool face*

[DaddyHoggy]

Disney have this ptex thing they've put out as open source, not sure how it works exactly, apparently you don't need to assign UV's (or if you do it's all 'behind the scenes' as far as the texture artist is concerned), It's not going to be any use for games, or the realtime stuff you work on DH, but if you're rendering out animations it might be worth keeping an eye on to see how it develops, the program 3dCoat supports it apparently, or you could get your bosses to buy you a licence for 'mari' when the foundry bring it out.
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheFoundryC ... A3441FBEC2 mmm, mari *griff smiley drool face*

Excellent find Griff - thank-you - one eyeball set to scan...

[Killer Wolf]

Gauss? :-/

[Griff]

Excellent find Griff

Not sure if you've found this already DH, but the news forum here is quite good for finding out about all the new stuff happening in computer graphics, http://forums.cgsociety.org/ it's quite heavily film/game FX orientated though, and full of lots of posts of people going "Wow! I can't wait to get my hands on this tool!" which is a bit LOLsome in an 'oo er missus' kind of way

[DaddyHoggy]

Excellent find Griff

Not sure if you've found this already DH, but the news forum here is quite good for finding out about all the new stuff happening in computer graphics, http://forums.cgsociety.org/ it's quite heavily film/game FX orientated though, and full of lots of posts of people going "Wow! I can't wait to get my hands on this tool!" which is a bit LOLsome in an 'oo er missus' kind of way

I noticed the news page - it's now bookmarked!

[JensAyton]

Gauss? :-/

Yep. Carl Friedrich Gauss is one of the major theoretical fathers of texture mapping (following more practically-minded experimenters such as Gerardus Mercator). In other fascinating trivia, René Descartes invented ray tracing.