Texturing sculpties in sl or 3d-app?

What is the best method for texturing sculpted prims? I don't mean the rgb-texture, but the regular texture. A sculptie has only one face to texture. Should the texture be made in a 3d-app itself or just in Photoshop like it normally works?

I am a designer, but I am new to 3d-apps. Could someone please explain what the preferred method is and (if a texture should be made in the 3d-app) how this works in Maya?

There isn't one.

Might seem like a harsh answer, but in truth it really depends on what the prim is going to do. For example, I've been playing around with doing prims for a motorbike.

1) Texture prepared though 3D app

Fuel Tank: for full painted custom tank best to prepare some detail textures in a graphics app, load these onto the model in your 3D app and render out a few textures such as ambient light and color maps, then combine these in your graphics app to tweak and get the final texture you upload to SL.

2) Texture prepared in graphics app

Wheels: using something like a 512 x 256 to represent a 20 degree slice of the wheel which is repeated 18 times will give better detail than a 1024 x 1024 texture. As this will be rotated then you want to do fake even lighting rather than using ambient or reflections from a render. Note: currently alpha problems (faces from far side of sculptie brought to front of view) and losing repeats on animated textures make this method for wheels mostly unusable.

3) No specific textures

Seat: model with nice even face spacing and normal fabric textures would be fine here.

Textures prepared outside SL specifically for a particularly sculptie will generally look better. Sculpties designed with in game texturing in mind will be more flexible. It's really something that needs considering on a per prim basis.

Using that large a texture just for a motorcycle wheel is a bad idea.

What the 1024 x 1024 or the 512 x 256? The 512 is hub to hub, so only 256 per side is visible. Particularly with spoked wheels any smaller and there isn't the pixels to get a good look. Sure bikes are most often seen from a distance, but there's a lot of close up action photos taken where a wheel will fill a third or more of the screen. I used that as an example of how a texturing choice can reduce memory needs by a factor of 8 and still give better results. Maybe you are giving less importance to "something like" than I did when I wrote it. Obviously the smallest texture that gives the right look is the best to use I think my old school wheels use a 256 x 128 for the rim plus a 256 x 256 for the hub/spokes.. so 512 x 256 is about the same.. If I can get away with smaller I surely will. And if you have a solution to wire spokes on smaller textures I'm all ears

Okay, so besides resolution (I always go for small sizes) it is best to make the texture in the 3d-app right? I mean for instance for a couch with curved edges etcetera. I know how to texture an object in Maya, but how can I export the total mapped texture to Photoshop?

going past 512 is a "no no" in that the game really can't accomodate it properly and its super hard on your graphics card. Not to mention tha the game will only handle maximum of 512 size so its just a waste of resources. I have seen recently a lot of textures again at 1024 I cannot figure out why i bought a texture pack from a texture artist that had everything at 1024 it made a lot of work for me as I had to save it to my hard drive and shrink it to 512. There was no difference in quality at the end the only thing that happened is i decided to build one of each with both sized textures to prove a point to someone who didn't believe me. They ported in and crashed their computer on the 1024 sized textures but had no problem with the 512 sized ones.

Paulo, I'm not familiar with maya, but a google for "texture baking maya" brings up plenty of tutorials.

I'm confused why everyone is going on about the 1024.. I quoted that size as what the equivalent detail rendered texture would be, not as a size to use. I'll try to remember to word things like "Here's a case where a rendered texture would need to be too large to be practical (at least 1024 x 1024). A 512 x 256 one could be done in a graphics program and give better detail." Then again I doubt I could be bothered to post if I have to watch what I say so much. Sorry for any confusion anyone..

Please don't stop posting, I'm not done learning!

A

LOL.. Guess I'm just easily misread.. Don't worry not gonna stop, just don't expect every word to be spelled correctly or things to be worded the best way possible. I'll just keep saying what I have to say and tidying up afterwards. Let's stop hijacking Paulo's thread as he still needs help with Maya, there's a piccy of the current prim wheels here if anyone wants to keep discussing those. It's my quest to get sculptie wheels that look better than those

Lol Domino. You helped me enough, don't worry. Because English is not my native language I was not familiar with the term 'baking', at least not for textures. Indeed many results come up in Google. You have helped me further on my way again. Thanks!

did you use maya to make the texture or just photoshop? i'm trying to get an idea of what is "easier" in the long run ?

I"m assuming that a 3d drawing program would be a whole lot easier then making the thing in photoshop not sure though. I've done 2d stuff and made clothes etc but never actualy done the 3d model part so this is kinda new to me this part (uncharted waters weee)

I use a mix of 3D and 2D, for some things 3D is easier for others 2D is best. Once you get into the materials handling of your 3D app you should start to see some similarities to working in 2D. You can build up layers using Mix Add Burn etc then let the 3D app render those for your model. Doing it in 3D has a few main advantages.

1) you can use prim specific lighting & ambient occlusion easily. This can be a big time saver over doing it manually.

2) the texture will be generated with all neccessary distortion to look even when applied to the models faces.

3) the materials can use infomation about the model. eg with the bike I could use the height of the model to control a dirt texture, so it's more muddy at the bottom than the top.

4) a mixed texture model is easier to do in 3D. This can also be used to produce templates for textures. For the wheels, I can apply a black texture to the tyre section, white to the hubs and rim, and say green where the spokes are. Render that and I have a nice template that shows exactly where there the transitions from one part of the wheel to the next are. This can be a big time saver even if you intend doing the final texture in 2D. It can also be used to produce the final texture. You can use this for things like a hammer where the head is metal and the handle wood to produce a single texture for both parts on a single prim.

It also has disadvantages such as:

1) the texture will be generated with all neccessary distortion to look even when applied to the models faces. This means the entire prim is on a single texture. repeating tiles etc will be baked into this final texture. This is why I do my wheels in 2D. It's easier to get a nice repeating texture there. It does mean more attention needs to be paid during the modelling stage to ensure the faces are placed for easy texturing.

2) textures are prim specific. To use the bike as an example again, the various frame parts all have very similar textures, if I render these then each prim needs a unique texture as the lighting will be slightly different on each one, that's gonna eat into graphics memory. A texture prepared in 2D to be a generic frame one can be used on all the frame parts, saving a lot of memory and time in preparing textures.

3) the render stage. generally speaking you need to render out your texture before you know just what it will look like. There's a greater challenge to the artist in visualizing what the changes they make will look like when working on 3D textures than working in 2D with it's immediate feedback.

Chosen Few has a great guide on texture sizes and memory use

All said and done graphics programs and 3D renderers are tools. There's a lot of different ways they can be used and there's no definate answer to what is easiest. A really good 2D artist might do the majority of their texturing in 2D, someone else may prefer to tweak settings in a 3D material until they get the look they want. Someone average at both (like me) might mix things up with a bit of each. It depends on what you are texturing too. For a wallpaper or flooring texture I wouldn't even consider using 3D, well unless I wanted shadows from another part of the build on them

Don't respond to them. That just makes it worse.

I was talking about 512x256. For just a motorcycle wheel, that's a lot of texture, too much I would say.

It all depends on purpose of course; for a motorcycle that someone would just ride around random sims and want a high framerate you will want to be frugal with textures, but for a situation where you want the screenshots to look really good and don't care about framerate, well those decisions determine what tradeoffs you make. Do you want pretty textures at the cost of lower framerates, or optimize the textures for better performance?

And no there isn't a solution for wire spokes on smaller textures. If you absolutely positively need your wheels to have wire spokes in screenshots, maybe have a separate high-res version of the motorcycle/texture that is used for taking close screenshots (essentially, you're doing manual LOD.) Other than that, you'll just have to go without wire spokes. The unfortunate fact is that your designs have to consider limitations of the platform, and SL puts a lot of limitations on builders.

---

sorry for going off-topic

Ha ha.. I was taking you seriously until I got to that.. As I'm running on a 64Mb graphics card I'm generally one of the first to be hit by texture related lag. So I'm not going to sacrifice usability in the name of looks, and I am very aware of keeping things as tight as possible.

A quick wheel check (CTRL_ALT_SHIFT_T) on the main SL bike builders shows 512 x 512 to be the normal for a spokes texture. I'd bet a lot of cars use that size on wheels - and the look of the wheels isn't half as important there.

The reality of the platform is that there is a competitive market where both looks and performance are important. Yes it's a balancing act where one trades off against the other, and yes the technical limitations can be frustrating, but to effectively say give up don't even try.. You've got to be kidding.

Still at least I have a good advertising line now "Said to be impossible..." he he

lol well I wouldn't characterize my statement as "give up," more "modify your design to work better." After all, not all motorcycle wheels have wire spokes.

As for other people using textures that are too large, well that would be a part (admittedly a small part, but still) of why SL is constantly lagging. Just because you can doesn't mean you should, and just because others do doesn't make it alright.

Ultimately though you're probably just going to ignore my opinion, so whatever.

All motocross ones do though. This is a non-negotiable part of the build for me. I make it work or write the project off.



Carefully considered and rejected isn't the same as ignore, and I haven't rejected all that you said by a long shot. Much is totally inline with my own thinking. As you said "It all depends on purpose". Which sums up this thread nicely, there isn't a simple answer to the best way to make textures. It's finding a way that works for your purpose that is important.

Frankly, cutting back on the rest of the bike's textures to allow for the wheel is a little limiting. At the moment I have no other option, but I am experimenting with sculpty wheels for just that reason. I've yet to experiment with shifting the vertices on my sculpty wheel to optimize texture use, but a bit of careful arranging and I can possibly get down to 256 x 128. Hopefully sooner or later the materials in SL will be improved and allow things like mirrored repeat which would cut a lot of texture needs in half.

If this has already been addressed, I apologize, skimmed through the other posts quickly. I haven't played with sculpties yet, but do 3D model for other programs, couldn't Steve Cox's UV Mapper help to make a template to create and then apply textures for your model?

Normally with that program (free one (UV Mapper Classic) is all you really need)... Sorry Steve if you are out there some where....

The method is just a means of exporting your model as an .obj from your modeling programing, opening it up in UV mapper, (File Load Model) and then making your texture template with it...

Anyway, like I said, I haven't done sculpties, but I don't think that due to the programs being used, making a texture template is that much different in reality...

Don't know if I can post the link to UV Mapper in here, so if anyone is interested in trying it out or help with it, feel free to IM me in world for the link and help with the program if you need it.