Digital Art Zone

I know I’ve been doing a shirt on another thread, but this thread relates to modelling textures…

I am after a material similar but not exactly to the example below…

I have Paintshop Pro, and Photoshop and have had no success in either.

What does everyone else use and how would they achieve mats like the example below please

Thank you.

There are several methods to use.

Use a sample of material that contains basic design pattern,
then make it seamless by removing one row from bottom and left side
Insert that into pattern stamp tool of Photoshop and paint new texture on template of clothing.

You can also google “seamless fabric” or similar and obtain a great many resources already done in this manner

Less successful is finding picture of clothing in approximate shape as UV template and pulling it into shape.

Until you UV map the shirt, there’s not really any point, because the textures won’t work.

I thought UV mapping was part of the process of attaching materials - I’m soooo confused here…

UV map it, lay out the map so that it makes sense to you and export the template.  In Photoshop draw the texture on layers.  The texture will only “take” on the lines of the UV template - the blank areas will not show any texture.  Be sure that the template is fully covered, or make the template layer invisible, collapse the layers and save as .jpg, png or other format.  Import that into Studio under the surfaces tab, diffuse.

Alternately, you can paint the texture directly onto the shirt in Hex, or use a 3D paint app like Blacksmith (the paint only version is free)  Blacksmith does automatic UV mapping, but doesn’t give you a template you can use to make subsequent texture variations - you will have to paint each variation from scratch.

OK - so I have gone to uvmapping and selected the region for the shirt body…
I then selected cylindrical UVMapping (because it started with a cylinder…
I then saved the resultant area as a BMP…
What now???
Am I best doing it as a cylinder or as a flat surface???
How can I get the garment flattened out?
I know I’m a dimbo but I honestly haven’t a clue!

Thanks

Here’s a shot of the UV mapping I did for it…

I used Blender which allows you to make seams to split the item along. There are other programs with that ability too, but I don’t think Hex is one of them. I find it one of the easiest methods of mapping around.

Yeah, it could use a little clean up to minimize stretching and even out some of the areas, but for a quick map it’s fine.  Also I wouldn’t worry too much about it if there are any mesh edits planned.  A map like this is fine for plain, solid color textures or to get an idea on how tiled ones would look.  But as a ‘final’ map, I’d clean it up first.

EEEEH! Mine looks nothing like that - mine looks like a strangled octopus!

tdrd - 17 November 2012 08:40 PM

EEEEH! Mine looks nothing like that - mine looks like a strangled octopus!

Welcome to the world of UV mapping!

UV mapping can be one of the most complex issues you’ll face when modelling. There are SO many ways of “getting the job done” that it becomes an art unto itself aside from the actual modelling.

Many people start with a primitive (which maps very cleanly) and then deform the primitive to create the model. Unfortunately, this only works as long as you don’t add/remove a single vertex. Doing so destroys the mapping.

Most people map their model using material domains after the model is finished. This allows you to work on discrete sections of a mesh without having to untangle the rat’s nest presented by mapping the entire model.

Most folks here use a 3rd party app for mapping (I use UVMapper pro, but there’s a free version available), while others, such as Mjc mentioned, prefer programs like Blender. I’ve seen a few other dedicated mappers mentioned often in these threads (and will probably get mentioned in this one) that get rave reviews by the users.

I find Hexagon’s unwrapping tool difficult to decipher, but that could be because I’m used to using UVMapper. UVMapper also let’s you save texture templates in exquisite detail while Hexagon’s templates are just plain cheesy.

Hexagon does use seams in it’s unwrapping scheme, and another tool called “pinning”. I believe Roygee in a past thread mentioned that he figured out how to use Hex’s unwrapping tool using these pins to achieve a satisfactory layout.

Bottom line is that there’s no simple one-size-fits-all magic bullet answer we can give you on how to map your shirt.

Just take a deep breath and relax because this could be a wild ride, but when the smoke clears you can end up with a nicely formatted UV map. 

I’ve been looking at some tutorials on UV mapping but not really any the wiser because they are all mapping a single flat surface.
I’ll look at uvmapper and see what it can offer….
I am limited to free versions at the moment having spent my budget buying this new computer out of my redundancy money a couple of months ago.
I figured I may as well have a decent PC since i’m going to have a bit more free time for a while.
Oh well - i’ll see what I can find - thank you.

I’ve downloaded UVMapper - loaded the object file and the picture I got is as shown below
What am I supposed to do with THAT!

With UVMapper, the ‘cleanest’ result is Planar, Z axis alignment…

mjc1016 - 17 November 2012 08:39 PM

I used Blender which allows you to make seams to split the item along. There are other programs with that ability too, but I don’t think Hex is one of them. I find it one of the easiest methods of mapping around.

Actually Hex does this as well and it’s really fast. Just go into Edge mode and select all the edges you want to split then go to UV and click the Head and then Validate.  Downer is that you have to move all the islands into the uv space since hex lines it up outside the uv space.
Nowadays I just export it once I determined where I want it to split and then use UV Master in ZBrush to make the final map.

Ah! I’m guessing UV isn’t UV as in photography… it’s something to do with 2 dimensional projection.
I read that xyz already used in 3d so uv was used instead????

OK - so if I want my collar to have a different material do I save this map to a seperate file to work on it?
Same for the arms and main body - seperate files????

You can just save all of the UV Mapped parts to the same UV template.  That is the whole idea, so that you can paint each area with a different colour (or texture) in Photoshop.  When you paint on to the template, 3D programs know where to apply the different parts to the UV model, assuming taht you have re-saved the OBJ file after creating the Template?

AS a texturer I have to say that the original UV map that MJC showed is the one I would choose to use.  It reflects how a shirt would be put together in realy life, and thus would produce the best textures for it.  Ithe UV grid lines are nice and clean, and thus wouldn’t produce too much stretching or deformation of the material used to create any textures.