How to wrap my head around textures..

...or how to wrap a texture around my head?

Anyways. I'm a SL neophyte, but I have to tell you, I have yet to see something yank me into a creative bent more than SL has. If I'm not being an utter clothes horse, I'm having grand aspirations for doing my own custom avatar work.

So I'm learning about textures this week, I think...seems to be my direction, at least.

I understand the concept of a UV map...I understand how alpha channels work (finally!) - I think I have a fairly good grip on things...to the point I'm seriously considering replacing my cheap Aiptek tablet with a Wacom, and getting a nice, thick book to read on 3D modeling.

What I DON'T understand is how all of you texture designers can stand on your heads, open only one eye, while looking at a fuzzy image that has been stretched out and distorted...and still have it come out looking beautiful on screen. (I'm referring more to the complex UV maps on the avs, but even the concept of sphere makes my head go nutty.)

I see these great textures on avatars, but when I go to look at them flattened out, they're impossibly distorted, or often don't look like the item they purport themselves to be.

So my question is, how do you visualize these things? Do most of you just go through an exhaustive process or trial and error? Is there some sort of super-secret method of doing these that relieves the pressure on the old grey matter? I just don't see how you all can think in skewed perspective all the time and not go nuts!

I'm assuming that you don't use SL for testing, but rather another 3d program with the imported avatar files? Is there a free or low cost program that'd allow me to do this? What about testing on irregular shapes that aren't avs?

Give me some insight into your brains and process, I'd love to know.

I, personally can't touch anything without a mesh. When I made my first blinking eye set for an anthro head (just a textured sphere) my mate understood almost immediatly how the sphere would need to be textured to achieve a blinking animation.
She's much more geometric then I am, however. =3

As for a low cost or free program, I've heard people on the forums talk about Tattoo and Poser. I believe Tattoo would be the cheapest alternative, but the version available for free on the site is a non-commercial use version.
Commercial registration seems to only by $44, not a bad price at all compared to Poser. Though with poser you can also create animations for Second Life

http://www.terabit.nildram.co.uk/tattoo/

Hi Wynne.

The simplest and most useful technique I use when mapping heads is to load the generic template onto my head in-game. Then, with the overlay showing in Photoshop, you can very quickly reference where things will end up, where your alpha blend should start and so on. I found it pretty easy after that I have to say.

I think if I start doing more clothes I shall need a 3D package, to help match seams and those damn collars. But this simple method seems to work well for faces.

For me, you simply just get used to it. After a while you realize where the stretching occurs and the trouble areas. You simply work with the problem areas or avoid them!

One of the free programs is Daz Studio--the free version of poser (it doesn't animate, tho). I have Daz Studio and Poser, but I still upload all my clothes for testing. I like seeing it in SL and once you get used to it, you can easily get clothing right the first or second time. It's not worth the extra effort working with a third program for me, in that case. Others may feel differently, tho

Awesome. Thanks for the program suggestions so far. What I'm reading is that people just get used to it...hehe...you're all nuts. XD But I can understand it...until they come out with a program that allows you to paint in 3D on a wireframe, this looks like the way to go.

Ahwell, I'll get used to it. I'll likely break my head a little, though!

So it looks as if I'll be able to test my textures easily within Poser or the like on the human avs...now my question is....do these programs allow you to test on geometric objects as well? And is there a way to test agaisnt complex objects...I'm talking about multi-prim objects....something I could export from SL and into these programs? I'm assuming not, as the objects we make within SL aren't really 3D models, but more collections of 3D models within each other, to make things easier.

Would like to save myself a couple thousand $L in my learning curve.

I think we all use different things.

Personally, before I followed Robin's advice and got DAZ Studio, I used to upload and use the texture previews a LOT, which got most of the really bad glitches, then upload a few times to get it just right.

As for mapping - well some things I do by trial and error - and a couple of relatively simple grids etc. so I can see how SL distorts a simple grid on a sphere, sheared or whatever prim and try to account for it. Clothes, perversely, (although I don't make many) are EASIER - it's not an identical system, but I see the templates much the same way I see a pattern IRL (only one sleeve is odd, but I can cope and the distorions are different) but I can see that material wrapping from there.

Of course it might help that I'm also, from a variety of places and backgrounds, pretty adept and pulling things up and visualising them in 3D and I'm afraid I can't really say how I do that part, it's just one of those things that I've had in the way my head works for a long, long time.

Please remember that in the SL upload window, before you actually upload the file, you can display the image mapped onto various body surfaces. Using the Alt & Ctrl view modifiers you can pan, tilt, and zoom the textured model. While this may not exactly match the shape of your final avatar, you can at least get a really good idea of when you're getting close...without spending $10L every time you want to quickly test a texture.

I think the best way to wrap your head around it is to wear the UVs in-world. You can grab a set of them from the notecards in my Texture Tutorial at Benten 17,105. That'll save you the $L 30 to upload the 3 maps. (I'd just go in-world and drop a set on you, but I have this render that has to be finished tonight, and given what a resource hog SL is, I don't want to run both that and LightWave at the same time.)

You'll need to make clothing out of them, but you can do that easily enough by just going into Appearances, making a New article of clothing, and choosing the UV maps as the Texture.

Put it on, turn around, take a lot of screen shots, and really examine what vertices lie where. Then, when you start to paint the clothing, you can use the vertices like a grid. You know that you want the neckline to start at this line, and go to that line, so you just do that on your flat picture.

By the way, if you want to paint on your model and you have the money, you can get programs that let you do exactly that. The one I have (but very seldom use, for a number of reasons,) is MAXON's BodyPaint 3D (Click on Products, and choose BodyPaint.) But there are others, as well.

On the other hand, I've never used it, because I'm on a Mac (and I have BodyPaint ) but I believe that Tattoo lets you do the same thing. And the price is certainly good!

For myself, this is part of what I do for my day job, and has been for more than 15 years now. So I'm really, really used to seeing 2D and translating it into 3D in my head. How? Practice. You do it for 10 -12 hours a day, six or seven days a week, for a decade or so and you'll be able to do it too.

Hehe, thanks for the good feedback.

I did some toying around with a upper body texture last night, and I was definitely aware of the preview function. My only complaint is that I can only really preview on an avatar, not on a prim. Le sigh. But it went well, and after I remembered that the SL engine does shadowing *for* me, I got it looking good. So that's a frst step.

Robin: Yeah, I can imagine spending that much time doing something, and you'd eventually just have it be second nature. I believe I have the patterns, as I took them from your texture tutorial during my first day or two in the game...I seriously need to organize my textures, but I'll get them if I need to again. And I was doing soem reading about the Bodypaint and Tattoo. I intend to look into both this weekend.

I'll be spending more time working on how to accurately predict how textures will look on a prim, I believe...as was stated, the avatar ones aren't actually too bad, depending on the level of detail you want...