texturing with Wings3d

[Commander McLane]

Something has happened which I thought was impossible. I've started modelling!

Downloaded Wings3d and discovered that somehow I can!

Now I'm stuck at texturing. I have designed something station-like, in a shape that isn't there yet, an octaedron with cut-off edges.

I have already a texture ready, which I would like to put on each of the faces. But I don't know how to do that.

Anybody out there who could give me a step-by-step explanation?

Thanks very much!

[Amen Brick]

I found this page http://oolite.aegidian.org/cyoship2/ useful. Remember to open your outliner window (found in windows drop down) if you need to refresh the image after editting in a graphics package.

[Commander McLane]

That's what I got. Unfortunately it doesn't answer my question.

And the current version of Wings3d seems to be different from the one Giles used.

One of my problems is the steps in the "Generating a texture map" around the "save your work", where he talks about renaming the objects, specifically the one named "diffuse" to "foo_texture" and then saving it as a png. Two issues: In my outliner there is nothing named "diffuse", but the texture is called "foo_auv", exactly like the material. And "Make external..." doesn't allow me to save as .png, it saves as .bmp without giving me other possibilities.

Apart from that my question is: How do I create a texture (read: a couple of textures) for parts of my ship? And apply the same texture for different parts?

[Killer Wolf]

the last time i did texture mapping, for my Vampires and space station, i had to UV map the model - this "unfolds" the face like origami in reverse and then you have to lay them all out and arrange them on a sheet. this sheet is you texture map, and you decorate it in PShop/whatever, so you simply put a different texture on whatever parts you want. it's a bit of a cram to get everything on, depending how big/complex your model is. i was hoping you could use several maps for a model, but apparently you can't (or Oolite can't ~ dunno if that's a generic thing or particular to here).

[Griff]

KW's right about the UV mapping, I don't use Wings to do UV unwrapping but i've read that it's excellent at it. I had a quick look at the tutorial linked to above and wings, for the 'Generating a texture map' section of the tutorial, try doing this:

select the entire object, right click on it and choose 'UV mapping-> Direct'
a new window appears called 'AutoUV Segmenting:'

right click on the view of your model in the AutoUV Segmenting: window and choose 'segment by -> projection', the faces of your model will change colour (not sure why - possibly a differect colour for each projection),

right click again on your model in the 'AutoUV Segmenting:' window and this time choose 'continue by -> unfolding'

you should now get a new window appear called 'AutoUV:' filled with a default texture of coloured lettered squares and a group of red coloured shapes representing the polygons of your model layed out flat, you can now use the vertex, edge and face selection tools at the top of the AutoUV: window to rearange the layout of the UV map,

keep checking how the default texture looks on your model as you move the uv's around - look for stretched and distorded areas and adjust the uv map accordingly to fix this otherwise your texture might look smeared or distorted.

Now i'm not sure about these steps, they're basically do delete any extra materials and leave only the default one

In the outliner window the default texture will be called auvBG. click and drag it onto the default Material (it will be listed as a white square with an M in it), when you let go of your mouse button a Texture type window will appear, choose 'diffuse'.

Delete the second material in the outliner window, it should end with _auv

you should now be able to import your own texture image into Wings and drag it onto the default material in outline to apply it to your model, you can then delete the auvBG texture.

I think Oolite supports 8 materials per object so you might be able to split your model into seperate materials and create different UV maps for each material. You can also lay UV's on top on each other if you want to repeat the same texture on different parts of your object - this is a great way of saving precious UV map space too

[Griff]

Hmm, i just tried my own workflow advice using a model more complex than the cube i was using and found it didn't really work that well.

A good way of unwrapping a model is to work methodically, unwrapping sections at a time, here's my take on how to do that in wings.

1. use the polgon face selection tool to select groups of polygons with a similar orientation


2. Right click on a selected face and choose UV Mapping->Direct. a new window called AutoUV Segmenting: appears showing you a view of your previously selected polygons.


3.Use your mouse to adjust the viewpoint orientation of the 'AutoUV Segmenting:' window so that the polygons face the camera as much as possible, we're doing this as we're going to unfold these polygons using 'camera projection'* so aligning them with the camera is going to minimise any distortion & streching in the generated UV's.


4. right click in the 'AutoUV Segmenting:' window and choose Continue -> projection camera. A new window will appear filled with coloured squares and your UV 'islands'


5. using the space bar to deselect and the 'object select' button (the red cube at the top of the window) start selecting UV islands and moving them off the area of coloured squares and into the neighbouring areas, try to lay them out so they match your model - it will make painting the texture map easier.


6. close the UV map window and go back to your model, select some more polygon faces and continue unwrapping your model (jump back to step 2 above),


7. place your new UV's next to your already existing uv's,if required scale and rotate your new UV island to fit.


8. once you've unwrapped your model completely, move all the UV islands back into the 'area of coloured squares', make sure they all fit in the area of coloured squares - there can be no bits left poking out as i belive you will get problems when converting your obj to a dat
-----------------

* an alternate to camera projection unfolding is polygon normal unfolding, this might work out to be a faster method as there is no need to line up polygons with the camera before unfolding, and you will also be able to unfold polygons with different orientations all at the same time:

eg, here i've selected a U shaped group of polygons that make up the models 'nose'...

...i'll unfold them using 'projection normal'...


...as you can see something has gone wrong - the side polygons have smeared horribly, if you look at the generated uv's you can see that the UV's that correspond to the problem areas are very thin indeed so a small amount of texture is being spread across a rather large polygon, to fix this we need to edit the uv map - use the edge selection tool and the move command to edit the problem UV's, keep an eye on the texture in the main viewport to see what effects your editing is having, you'll want to get the 'squares' as square as possible and the same size as the other squares.

[DaddyHoggy]

This is excellent explanation Griff (as ever) - will help me no end (and no doubt many modelling lurkers) - should this be a sticky?

[Selezen]

Definitely a sticky.

The thing with Wings is that there are a few different methods to unwrap a UV texture. Each has its benefits and downfalls. My favourite is as follows, and generates the most accurate maps, but it will be more complex and take longer the more faces your model has.

Select your entire model, then select the edge tool - this will highlight every edge.

Right click and select Hardness -> Hard.

Select the whole model again, then right click and select UV Mapping -> Direct.

In the Segmenting window, change nothing, but right click again and click Continue -> Projection Normal.

This will separate the model's faces completely, making every one separate and flat. Now comes the hard part.

Using both the Auto AV and Gemoetry windows, join adjacent faces to make flat surface maps. Note that faces that are on the same plane (i.e. that you can see clearly when looking along an axis) should be joined together as much as possible to make your texture flow along the model in a more linear fashion.

Once you are happy with the texture map, create the texture and save it.

Note that to save a texture as a PNG, you have to select the option PNG in the "Save as type" dropdown list. The default file type is BMP.

If that's useful, or anyone wants more detail, I could put together a PDF or something.

[DaddyHoggy]

@S - a pdf or something would be great for those of us who ares still frightened by the whole modelling thing but who have (what they think are) great ideas and they want to bring them to life!

[Killer Wolf]

i used a tool called Ultimate Unwrap, but yeah - it's best (and far easier in the long run) to group as you go. eg, modelling my Vampire, i grouped the tail fins, the dorsal plates, the ventral plates, the wings etc etc. this also greatly helps in the modelling as you can easilt select/hide bits that can get in your way. it's sometimes instinct to just dive in and model away, but you'll help yourself immeasurably in the long run w/ a bit forward planning.

[Commander McLane]

Thanks for the replies so far!

They don't yet cover my question, however.

Perhaps I should be more specific: I am modeling something that resembles the Oolite stations. So it has lots of similar faces, like a dodec. If you take a dodec as example, it has 12 pentangular faces, which are exact copies of each other.

So for texturing I don't want to unwrap those 12 exactly likely faces, place them neatly next to each other, and texture them all differently. What I want is to have one and the same texture (size 512x512) and just assign this texture to all of the 12 pentagons. (Ok, actually it's not pentagons, but triples of triangles; but they still are 12 exact copies of each other).

What I've tried is this: If selected one of the sides of my object, created the UV-map, textured it, and re-imported it into Wings. The texture is shown on that one side of the object (one triangle-triple). Then I selected the next pentagon, right-clicked on the material that contains the texture in the Outliner-window, and chose "Assign to selection". But it doesn't work. No texture is shown on the selected new faces, although the texture on the original faces is still there.

What am I doing wrong?

*****

Now I have deleted the wings-file and the texture file. Then I got the wings-file (but not the textures) out of the trash and opened it again. I get an error-message concerning the mission texture ("bad file"), and all the faces to which I applied the texture are black. Even those which never showed the texture.

*****

My question is therefore: How do I assign the very same texture to more than one face? It must be possible, because there are examples for this in the game. Not only the stations, but also the Thargoid Ships. They are octogonal, with four green and four read sides. Nevertheless in its texture there is only one green and one red plate. So it must be possible to assign this same part of the texture-png to different parts of your model. Just how?

[Svengali]

Hello McL,

I don't know anything about texturing under WINGS, but I know that you can move all faces to one point.

Mark the whole object -> Open your AUV-Editor (UV Mapping -> Direct) -> Select All Faces -> Right Click -> Move To -> Center

Maybe you have to correct rotations and/or scalings, but this could be the trick.

[Amen Brick]

Is there any way to quickly infill lines with the texture? I find that can take hooooours, particularly if there are a lot of diagonals.

[Commander McLane]

Hello McL,

I don't know anything about texturing under WINGS, but I know that you can move all faces to one point.

Mark the whole object -> Open your AUV-Editor (UV Mapping -> Direct) -> Select All Faces -> Right Click -> Move To -> Center

Maybe you have to correct rotations and/or scalings, but this could be the trick.

That sounds like a promising approach. I had thought of basically the same after making the post. Will try it out.

[Griff]

@ Commander McLane
see in step 4-6 of my post above, instead of laying out the UV's next to each other, place them on top of each other, then they'll share the same texture - this is a good way of saving space in your UV map too so you can spend it in other areas.
it might help if you swap out the multicoloured squares texture wings provides for one of your own textures, then it'll instantly click with you when you start moving the uv's around and see how the texture gets applied, it'll be more obvious what's going on than when using the 'squares' texture