That turned out really nice Mark, job well done!

- Michael

Hi Mark

Really cool model, renderings are good if a little dark. Maybe a levels job in photoshop. Curious as you say you have your mapping worked out, what are you using to generate your maps/ UVs?

Jamie

Thanks Michael and Jamie for your kind response.

I often do my renders too dark, I don't know why really. Perhaps I should calibrate the monitor on my laptop?

Regarding the texturing, I ended up doing the mapping with UVMapper Pro. I have trueSpace from many years ago which has roughly the same capabilities but is completely incapable of importing/exporting Moi's models with the vertex normals intact. trueSpace is no orphan there either. There are a *lot* of 3D apps which get it wrong. UVMP fortunately imports and exports the vertex normals OK, so I was able to map the model and export a template texture map from there for the major components. I mostly just used planar mapping for the parts, occasionally cubic.

I used the following method which worked for me:

1. Exported components from Moi with coloured surfaces to break the model into particular areas I wanted to map. Attachment 1 shows the hull done this way. The most important coloured areas are the red & blue surfaces as these are partially obscured by other parts of the hull and require separate mapping. Most of the rest of the hull I wanted to map as one part. I still coloured the areas though (eg. the dazzle pattern) as UVMP can create the texture template with colours to differentiate those areas of the map, very handy later.

2. Imported the model into UVMP. The template as can be seen in attachment 2 is all lumped into one spot at this stage as there is no mapping.

3. Select areas by material (or group when appropriate) as shown in attachment 3. The selected parts can be seen in attachment 4.

4. Move selected part of template to a fresh spot (attachment 5).

5. Apply mapping to the selection (attachment 6).

6. Repeat for all the other sections which require mapping until you get something like attachment 7. Note that the separately coloured surfaces on the hull sides were mapped together but you can still see them on the template as distinct coloured areas.

It would be normal at this stage to use the template as a guide (loaded into a layer) in a paint package to create the actual texture map. I decided instead to flood fill the coloured areas of the template (using a homemade flood fill utility) and then make minor adjustments to that in a paint package which allowed me to get very precise placement of items like the dazzle pattern.

The final map (size reduced) can be seen in attachment 8.

None of the above will be new to anyone on this forum but I floundered with this for so long, perhaps it will be useful to someone having the same trouble.

Hi Mark,

That's a terrific job, Well done!!

With regards to calibrating your monitor, maybe this link might be of some use?

http://www.calibrize.com/index.html

regards Colin

Nice Job, looks great!

Hi Mark

Thanks a lot for your UV overview, downloaded the demo of UV mapper and so far like its simplicity. Im looking for a tool like this.

Easiest way to check if your renders are dark is levels in photoshop or similar. See if the graph reaches to the right ie if it has white/ bright pixels in the image. Probably is your monitor if it always happening. I have attached a brightened version for comparison.

Regards

Jamie

Thanks Colin & David :)

I will check out the calibration link when I get home. I really need to do this.

Jamie, I don't have photoshop (thinking about getting it) but I will try your suggestion in one of the many freebie paint packages I've got installed. I will let you know how it goes. Your fixed image looks much nicer!

The author of UVMP (Steve Cox) is, like Michael, a good bloke who values his customers and will help you out if you have issues with the software. As you said, it is nice and simple. About the only thing I would like to see added to it is the ability to import multiple obj's to be exported as one obj, something which he is considering adding. In order to maintain those all important vertex normals and merge my parts, I had to use Milkshape, which for $35 handles the vertex normals perfectly. It also has some useful tools. Unfortunately, it is also a very old 3D app and will only load a maximum of 65k polys. Still useful to have in the kit though.

Very nice work Mark.


- Steve

Hi Mark

You dont need photoshop almost any editing program has levels. Attached a couple of pics to show the adjustment. Just moving the right arrow to the left. Laptop screens can be hard to calibrate often blowing out the highlights and muddling up the dark areas because they cant show the shades of grey as they get towards black.

Can you not compile the .objs in simlab and combine them into one .obj?

regards

Jamie

Hi Mark:

Very instructive post.
I like your nice result!
Thank you for sharing you knowledge with us! ;-)

Hi Everyone,

Many thanks again for your kind responses :)

Colin, I downloaded that monitor calibration utility you linked to and applied it. Many thanks.

Jamie, I will be able to merge all of these parts in Simlab in the future. At the moment, Simlab doesn't use the object origins when importing and objects do not line up with each other. I have to manually drag them to where they need to be. The Simlab guys are pretty responsive though and will be adding an option to fix that in the next release.

David, you are very welcome and how is Aurora coming along? Have you found a way to get some on the water renders done?

These will be the last renders of Yarra for a while (until I can get it onto some "water"). These are straight out of Simlab with modded lighting to brighten things up a bit. Still not as good as Jamie's photoshopped version but I want to find a base render setting just for sending off snapshots.

Cheers All!

Hi Mark

Renders are looking great. Are you going to add water in Simlab? you should be able to use a normal or bumpmap to make waves. I think I have a bumpmap if you need one.

Regards

Jamie