Topic: General Distress Hail!

[MajorRacal]

Well, as those of you who've been keeping an eye on my models have no doubt noticed (or maybe you haven't?), I never seem to complete anything before jumping onto another project.  Aside from my wandering attention span and overwhelming urge to work on 'all these things', a lot probably has to do with me modelling with 3DS Max 5 - and since I only started all this recently,  I obviously have a LOT to learn still.  However, at the moment, my biggest stumbling block is texturing.

OK, I can apply textures to my models, but these are really only the broad strokes.  I think I'm getting better at this, even though I still have problems importing images/textures to use, but I'm beginning to make some headway with that side of things, so I don't think this'll stay a handicap for long (look out for me posting retextured Vackan models later in the week).

No, what I'm still having real problems with is applying the finer hull details, applying emblems, logos, text, windows and glows etc.  As far as I'm aware I'm supposed to be able to use the UVW unwrap to unfold or flatten models and export the maps to photoshop or paintshop, however this is where I'm getting stuck - once I've unwrapped the model, and saved the file, I can't open it up to edit in either PS5 or PSP8 - the files can't be read as they are in an incompatible format.  Am I doing something wrong?  Am I missing a plug-in or something?  Can anybody help me out here??

I reckon, once I've worked past this obstacle, I'll be able to progress to making glows and maybe even damage textures so that I can actually post completed models for you all to appreciate, and maybe even use in the future (OK, I still have to learn a lot more along the way for that, but I'll take it a step at a time, and trust in your patience).

MajorRacal    

[Captain KoraH]

Well I'm no expert, but what I do is make renders of the parts of the ship to texture, and save the render as a bmp that I import into photoshop and edit, then apply with Max. It's a complicated process and there is probly an easier way, but it works for me.  

[Desty_Nova]

Yeah, I use the same method as Captain korah. Say you want to texture the top of a rear hull of a k't'inga. Just render it from the top view, then bring that into photoshop. In photoshop, create the texture over the render, so that it lines up and matches the proportions of the rear hull. Then hide the render, save the texture, and apply it in Max. It should work fine since you lined it up in photoshop using the actual model as your guide. Hope this helps you out.  

[anduril]

When you are doing your uv unwrap in max to scale and place your mesh over the texture look up to the top of the window and find the checkered cube.  Hit it and you'll see that the bitmap texture goes away leaving you with an outlined  gray square with the mesh in white overlay'n it.  Make sure you maximize that window and use the zoom function to make that outlined section as large as possible but still visible.  Take a screen shot.  Open PS, having it open already is better, and do a "file-new" and paste it in.  Use your bounding box to select the section that pertains to your bitmap.  (the outlined area) keep your bounding box x and y values equal since your bitmap was square to begin with.  Then cut it, do another "file-new" and paste it.  Do a resize of that to 512x512, 1024x0124 or whatever size you use to make your textures with.  Now you can take this layer and have it as your top layer of the texture of your .psd.  Drop the opacity down to 10-20% or whatever you like and have fun making all the layers below.

I will do this numerous times as I fill up the bitmap with the various meshed parts of the ships.  that way you can always see where stuff is and you can fill up the little spaces and move stuff around to pack it in better.

Some of you will understand this some won't but as you get used to the uv unwrap function and the cutting and pasting it will become second nature and make things a breeze.

[MajorRacal]

Thanks guys!  I was beginning slip into madness over this...

MajorRacal  

[James Formo]

Well I have no clue with how to even start unwrapping or whatever that is. Since I am getting older(thus harder to learn new tricks) I still use Milkshape to map. Sounds like I do something similar to a couple methods above. I make a screen shot in milk, while in wire frame. Then resize and paste into texture. Probably learned that from Anduril in a thread awhile ago.
Then I like to use the wire frame for patterns sometimes as I am doing on your Merlin.  

Your Merlin is all done except I have to do the visually library hardpoints, screen shots and load outs. Kinda like the paper work end of modeling  I have done break mods before, but this is the 1st ship I capped the ends on. Also did damage textures for the 1st time. I think they turned out alright. My trouble is my video card. Even the stock ships only show damage as black blobs, and then the triangles get shiney. Might be that 32mb Viper II just can't read damage on top of the regular textures.   So I have no way of knowing how the damage will look. Hopefully your computer is faster then mine.

MajorRacal, I hope to have this file in your email tommorow. Whats you limit for recieving files? As this may be over  a 2mb zip.
Been having fun working are your ship, I'd probalbly try some of your others, but like you have projects scattered all over I need to get back to.