Last Updated Thursday, July 29, 2010
Mapping Textures
At some point in very developer's developing career, they will run into a product that has no texture map, or one that cannot easily be found. This tutorial is meant as a guide on one method of figuring out how to map textures when you don't have one. As always, there is no universally good way of mapping a texture. All meshes are different, and some simply do not led themselves to mapping. There is trial and error and a lot of work invovled with mapping textures, so pelase, have patience and keep trying!
First of all, remember that not all textures are perfectly square. There are many textures that aren't (it sucks doesn't it?). These textures sometimes make mapping them a very difficult task. Remember before you start mapping a texture, you should first:
- Ask around the forums to see if anyone has a ready-made texture map for your use.
- Check with the original developer of the mesh you're deriving from and see if they could lend you a texture map to use.
Assuming that you know relatively how the developer tools work, go ahead and derive off whatever product it is that you need to map, and load it into the previewer. Switch to the textures tab.
Now, a lot of developers use varying methods of this one to map their own textures - there is no right or wrong way, but this is what i've found to be the easiest way for myself.
Open your paint program (whatever you use) and make a 400x400 square image. I find it's useful to floodfill this with black, though you can use any color (I just find black makes it easier to see given what you're about to do with it...). Now, using your selection tools, line tool, or pencil, make a series of verticlal lines that go from the top of the image down to the bottom. It helps if they are all various colors. The method I use for this is to take my selection tool and set it to about 400px in height by 1px in width, and I space lines evenly all the way across my image. I then hit Layers>New Via Copy. This makes a new layer on my image with my pre-defined lines all the way across. I then lock the opacity on the layer (so I don't color anything but the lines), and then start coloring the lines different colors (grouped I've found works well) all the way across. In the end you should come out with something that looks like this:
(in fact, steal mine if you'd like).
There's a reason I chose to group lines by color. Eventually in this tutorial, we will get to the part where we'll need to know where each of these lines are on our texture. If they are grouped, it's easy to say "okay this line is the third line from the start of blue... starting on the pink end" and we can count the lines to find the right one. If they're all the same color, you're still doing a lot of guesswork. I've found it's easier to do this method than to color each line a seperate color that's easily defineable.
Save this image on your computer where it can be easily found, and then go back to your paint program and rotate it 90 degrees to flip it on it's side. This makes a version that has the lines horizontally. You will need both.
(again, feel free to steal mine).
Now, go back to your developer tools and load your rainbowy line texture that has vertical stripes. If your product wants to cooperate (and not all will) your product should show something like this:
See how the stripes line up all over the pants? Now it's easy to see where each part of the texture is applied. You can even usually find the "seams" of the texture (where the seams would be on a pair of jeans) and map them out. Unfortunately, you do have ot map for both directions, because sometimes the textures are split half-way down to where each portion of the texture goes. For this you use the second rainbowy line texture (with the stripes horizontal) to help you map where things go a little better.
Example. From looking at the images I've posted above, I can tell that the bottom cuffs on my jeans should start about three 1/2 yellow lines dwon from where they meet green. So, I take my horizontally lined texture and find where my cuffs begin.. and color that entire section. Then, I load it into the developer tools to see if I was right:
Obviously, I was right! For the rest of the texture, the method is identical. You count lines and place blocks of color until you're sure you know where each section or seam line is, until finally, you can use your newly mapped texture to start painting your new product.
