At some point in every developer's developing career, they will run into a product that has no texture map, or one that cannot be easily 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 textures... all meshes are different, and some simply do not lend themselves to mapping. There is trial and error and alot of work involved with mapping textures, so please have patience and keep trying!

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First of all, remember that not all textures are perfectly square. There are many textures that aren't (it sucks doesn't it?) lol that sometimes makes mapping them a very difficult task. Remember that before you start mapping a texture, you should first a) ask around the forums to see if anyone has a ready-made texture map for your use. b) check with the original developer of the mesh you're deriving from and see if they could lend you a texture map... i assure you someone probably has the texture map... whether they want to share or not is a different matter.

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 alot 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 its useful to floodfill this with black though you can use any color (i just find black makes it easier to see given what we're going to do in a minute). Now, using your selection tools, line tool, or pencil, make a series of vertical 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 1 pixel 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 dont 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 similar to this:

 

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 its easy to say "okay this line is the third line from the start of blue starting at 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 alot of guesswork.. and i've found its easier to do this method than to color each line a seperate color thats 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% to flip it on its side.. this makes a version that has the lines horizontally.. you will need both.

 

Now, go back to your developer tools and load your rainbowy line texture that has vertical stripes. If your product wants to cooporate (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 the jeans) and map them out. Unfortuantely you do have to map for both directions, because sometimes the textures are split halfway down as to where each portion of the texture goes. For this you use the second rainbowy line texture (with its 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 down from where they meet green... so, I take my horizontally lined texture and find where my cuffs begin.. and color in the entire section... and then load that 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.

 

 

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