kcwright_rm
Cumberland & Eastern RRTC
what is that again?
GMax and 3DSMax (And any other modeling program) screenies/renders
- Thread starter Mr.Kamikaze
- Start date
crazytrain
Hobo
To accommodate complex paint schemes on some diesels, I 'unwrap by view' for the main parts of the body; sides, front back top, etc. If one does this carefully, it sure makes lining up any modified versions a breeze. It can be a pain getting all of the facing normals selected for the "snapshots", but it's worth it in the end. One thing that helps big time is going through and marking seams to separate the body into per-determined islands beforehand. A few dry runs to see how they will all fit in the texture spaces helps too.
While I use the Smart UV Unwrap feature on some things, I've found that just by marking seams and then simply hitting 'unrap' gives me the continuity in uv's required. For example, unwrapping a cylindrical object with Smart Unwrap flips face and scrambles the sides up. By marking the end seams, then one seam the length of the cylinder with the 'Unwrap' command, it will keep everything nice and tidy.
BTW, Nice models all.
While I use the Smart UV Unwrap feature on some things, I've found that just by marking seams and then simply hitting 'unrap' gives me the continuity in uv's required. For example, unwrapping a cylindrical object with Smart Unwrap flips face and scrambles the sides up. By marking the end seams, then one seam the length of the cylinder with the 'Unwrap' command, it will keep everything nice and tidy.
BTW, Nice models all.
I mainly use multiple, single color computer-generated PBR materials for my meshes (e.g. via Adobe Substance or Quixel Mixer), And then place railroad logos, numbers, and other symbols or images manually onto it in blender (Without it actually being on the final texture). For those who use photo texturing however, this is a very good idea that will save lots of time. And I will try this.
It's an ATSF 2-8-2 Mikado, if that's what you were asking. BDAneal had one, but I wanted to make a newer, higher-quality, PBR version for trainz.
daylightrain
Development Purgatory.
Proper mapping is honestly one of the worst and most important parts of modeling. I wouldn't use single color materials as Trainz will give you errors if you do so or apply logos separately, as that adds extra images to the model which increases file size. I do what Bentrain14 suggests and map objects as I go, plus I reuse meshes whenever I can. It saves a lot of time in the long run.
Also to note: Personally I think Smart UV is an awful choice for anything cylindrical or complex in shape and no one should ever limit themselves to just one UV tool. Things like wheels, boilers, cylinders, air tanks, domes, etc tend to come out better by marking seams and unwrapping.
This map took me about half a day to do fully, mostly on and off work. I've never used any payware plugin for blender to speed up mapping, I've always used a mix of UV and smart UV to unwrap my projects. Sadly its just not an overly quick process.
Ah, but you don't need to remap multiple copies of the same thing. If you make (say) a grab rail and then clone it with ALT-D and not SHIFT-D you create a linked copy. UV mapping one of then automatically maps the others as well. If you've already created clones using SHIFT-D you can simply copy the UV map from one mesh to a copy by using CTRL-L and then 'Transfer UV maps'. Use linked clones as much as possible as you can also change the geometry of one instance and they will all change to match.
True, but having jumbled up UVs is not a problem when using texture painting as the colour lands in the correct place anyway. Smart UV Project is indeed a 'quick and dirty' solution, but in conjunction with UVPackMaster Pro it works well enough and is very, very fast. It has two big advantages, firstly if all of the meshes are selected and unwrapped in one hit you know that at least you have reasonably sane UV mapping on all of the faces. When doing it manually it's easy to miss faces and then you wonder why the AO bake is coming out wrong. Secondly it tends to create more small islands which UVPackMaster Pro can then pack more efficiently resulting in a higher texel density for the map.
I wouldn't only use Smart UV Project either, but joining islands together doesn't always give you better packing, it fact bigger islands may waste space. The thing with UVPackMaster Pro is it will tell you if the packing is better or not when you change something.
I realise of course that some people will never pay for a Blender addon, but it comes down to how much you value your time. If you've never tried it then you'll never know if it will help you. Here's part of a UV map I did in about two minutes:
I can say with confidence that you will never, ever be able to replicate that in a reasonable time manually.
Paul
kcwright_rm
Cumberland & Eastern RRTC
this is good
kcwright_rm
Cumberland & Eastern RRTC
even better
Wow that looks amazing! Are those wheels animated?
Alrighty, So this took me a while to do, but I think I'm satisfied with how they are. I built the 9x14 and 7x14 Journal Boxes for the 4 wheel trailing Truck... This is the National Journal Bearing Versions that were used when built before being replaced with the Southern Pacific Journal Boxes. I will be doing both versions.
Thanks,
Logan Thurman
Thanks,
Logan Thurman
kcwright_rm
Cumberland & Eastern RRTC
10/10 i want
