Texturing for sculpted prims: HELP

As we all dive into sculpted prims I noticed that texturing them is often times more of a hassle than making the shape itself. Has anyone been able to figure out how to account for the texture repeats and stuff?

For example, I have a simple square prim with lots of grooves and a hollowed center (more like an inverted cone), but when I place a texture on it that's a tile pattern, it bunches up the texture on the edges and the flat edges are more stretched. If I adjust the repeats, then I get varying amounts of success and what not but it still doesn't look intentional.

I want to eliminate this bunched up portion of the texture with something that's not tiled, but I'm having a very hard time figuring out what parts of the texture to tweak in photoshop. Has anyone figured out the best method to texture sculpted prims?

Thanks!
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This may not be the best or most complete answer to your problem, but I've been using Robin Sojourner's handy texture that has the colored and numbered squares for figuring out how to distort textures for use on regular prims. I make the shape, texture it with the test pattern, shoot screen shots, distort the texture, test, repeat. I know. Tedious. I hope someone will chime in with better information than mine because after playing around a little with just one (limited experience, don't trust me ) sculpted prim I was thinking solid colors could become all the rage.

EDIT: And I think I know what you mean about the "bunched up" areas. I applied some test textures and considered despair for a few brief moments. What's up with that?

Just a thought:

If you applied the texture to the object while still IN the 3D application, then there is usually a way you can view the "UVW Coordinates" of that texture in the 3D Application.

From there you could either save it as a texture file (BMP, TGA, and so on) or do a screenshot into Photoshop.

Not sure if it works as I havent tried it myself. But this sounds like a way to do it.

The freeware tool "Lith Unwrap" is a great help (http://files.seriouszone.com/download.php?fileid=198). Export your 3D model as an OBJ (Wavefront object format), open it in Lith Unwrap, triangulate if needed, save the UV map and use it as a texture template.

Lith Unwrap is also useful to create a sculptie-compatibe UV map for a mesh object. Create any mesh in the 3D tool of your choice, export an OBJ and open it in Lith Unwrap. Set the UV-mapping to spherical and drag the corner points around to completely fill the rectangular map, in order to avoid holes and empty corners that lead to "bad pixels" in the sculpt map. Overwrite the OBJ file with Lith Unwrap and turn it into a sculpt map using Rael Delcon's Obj2Sculpt program (linked in this thread: /8/e8/182763/1.html).

Edit: why do the URL tags don't work anymore?

well the final piece to the sculptie puzzle I found is to use UV mapper from UVmapper.com its 60 bucks so not to expensive and is designed for use with 2D paint programs

They turned if of there is an announcement at the top of the forum they are doing something with the forums so its turned off for now.

http://forums.secondlife.com/announcement.php?f=109

What does it do exactly? Let you paint the texture while it's wrapped around the mesh?

It creates a map and you move that to a 2D program (something like that) I was just reading about it and it looked like it was the solution. Its actualy on the forums around somewhere here already. So like the template type maps we use for other 3D things like clothing it seems to create a usable and followable map. Plus when I was looking at it you could wrap your texture you created (the graphical one) around shapes. In any event it does seem to be the solution or the best one I could find.

Here is one tutorial i found that pretty much looked like it does what we need it to do (i think..)

displaying your painted texture tutorial

http://www.uvmapper.com/tutorials/tutorial_paint.html


making a uv map tutorial

http://www.uvmapper.com/tutorials/tutorial_template.html


UVMapper Professional is a stand-alone texture mapping utility for the creation and modification of UV coordinates for n-sided polygonal 3D models. UVMapper Professional offers multiple, fully configurable viewports with completely interactive 2D and 3D views. It includes planar, box, cylindrical, spherical and polar mapping modes, all of which are available in a realtime, interactive mapping environment. Also included are many other tools such as Relax UVs and Subdivision Surfaces that will allow you to bring your texture mapping skills to the next level. Whether you are a beginner, intermediate or professional 3D artist, UVMapper Professional will provide you with everything you need to texture map the most demanding models.

heh sorry keep adding info think i'm done now..

Does it work with NURBS too? I don't see that option on the UV Mapper site.

i dont know what nurbs are actually

sorry i'm pretty new to this

what I am seeing is you create your 3D model in your whatever 3D program you use then paint in your 2D program and make a macro in and keep a window open and use it with imported scultured objects and basically it looks like you keep refreshing it till your texture is done.

I saw one finished model that used wings, uvmapper and bryce and another using uvmapper and zbrush and photoshop and others combinations

sorry i'm not more technical about it I only actualy started using this stuff 24 hours ago hehe and was stuck on the how to put a graphical texture onto the sculpted shape part

Yes, the biggest challenge won't be to make the sculpties but to texture them. Because there will always be two sides on the prim where the poles are and where any texture gets deformed.

This can hardly be resolved by uv mapping or adjusting textures in a 2d program. I wonder what others see as the best solution to this.

The *best* solution is a higher end 3D paint program that lets you paint right on your 3D model, and then outputs that painted "skin" as a texture that will wrap around the sculpty.

A UV map is almost as good. It outputs a generic texture that will wrap around your sculpty, but unwrapped and all distorted so as to be flat. Like the clothing templates...

You then paint that in a 2D program, using the lines on the template as a guide.