3DC Texturing

[Hawk]

In TSM you could tile a texture. Is there a way to do something similar with 3DC?
If so, are there any glitches when exporting to RS?
If not, what would be the best work-around? Re-doing the texture or dividing the face?

[decapod]

There are two options for tiling with 3DC (both work fine in RS)

1. In the material tab you may notice a small red corner on the flat wrapping option button (next to the cylindrical and spherical buttons)
This indicates a right click option is available.
The right click popup lets you select tiling options when applying a texture.

2. An alternative is to use the adjust tool on the Right Toolbar - this changes the last operation on an object.
If you apply a texture to a face, then select the adjust tool then the object again, the bottom right "widget" can be used to scale (tile) or shift the texture mapping.

[Hawk]

Thank you Paul. Much appreciated.

[Hawk]

I tried option 1 above and while it works using the 'Tile by unit', there is no option to tile either vertically or horizontally. It simply tiles the texture both ways, which isn't what I need.
If I check the 'Tile to fit', then I can't crop the texture (I have several different textures on one texture file/bmp). It applies the whole texture to the face (I'm using the paint brush as opposed to the fill bucket).

I tried option 2 above but I'm a little confused as to the 'widget' part of that tip. I couldn't find this 'widget'. A search for 'widget' in the help files turned up nothing.

Since I use the same texture on different faces, but tiled differently on each face, it seems to me that I would have to create a separate texture to be applied to each face, or divide the face - which would add more polys to the model.
Here's a jpg version of the bmp I'm trying to use. I need to be able to tile the brick texture differently on different faces, as well as the rock & concrete textures.

HkSt2St_b.jpg

I'm trying to avoid creating a bunch of different texture files by having the different textures in one file.

I've looked through the various tutorials but I didn't see anything showing how to create a simple building. Since I'm a little pushed for time I really don't have the time to go through all the tutorials. If I can just figure out how to texture the way we could do in TSM I can progress along and get the projects done.

Edit 1: Here's an example of what I'm talking about; not being able to tile according to the face.

Clipboard02.jpg

The face on the right is how it should be (I used the 'Tile to fit' option).

[decapod]

The widget is the shifting and scaling tool with the 3 colored axes, in the bottom right of the viewport.

Apply the texture, select the operation adjust tool, click on the object and scale/shift the texture.

It's not a precise science but can achieve horizontal or vertical tiling - A new texturing tool is on the cards for future 3DC versions.

[Hawk]

OH! You mean this little jewel?

widget.jpg

Thanks! I'll give that a try. Much appreciated, again.

[Hawk]

OK! I see how that works, but again - it doesn't work with cropping.

I was reading at the 3DC forum about the new version coming, but as I understand, it won't be available until the end of April, which is about the time I have to be finished with the project.

I guess I'll have to try something else, probably creating new textures, and more than I understand is desirable for RS and frame rates.

Thanks again for your help Paul.

Edit 1: I am making a little progress, but I'm having to use individual textures as opposed to one texture file. I guess this will have to do for now.

Clipboard02.jpg

Now if I can figure out the lighting adjustment in 3DC I should be good to go.

[decapod]

Cropping and tiling the textures as you have them there would also be impossible with TSM or 3DStudio.

The texture coordidinates are set at the vertices of a face, they usually range from 0.0 to 1.0. Tiling occurs when the texture coordinates go above 1.0 so either the whole width or whole height of the texture must be used.

[Hawk]

Yep! After I made that post I realized the errors of my comment. I did know tiling with a texture file like I was using would only tile the whole X or Y.
My bad.

I am starting to get a feel for texturing in 3DC though. Using your second tip works quite well, now that I know how to do it.
With your help of course.

I believe the darkness of the textures I'm seeing is because that model is an imported dst file. I'm thinking it might be just as easy to start from scratch instead of texturing an imported dst without textures.

[timhorton]

Hi

maybe this is a newbie question but i have been modelling for a couple months now and have had success with "size to fit" texturing by adding a bunch of small boxes in sketchup and individually texturing each box to look like a tiled texture. I have "tile to fit", "tile by unit" and cropped textures to create some great looking textures in 3dc 8.2 but alas when i go into blueprint editor to bring the object into the game all i get successful build but all that shows is the widget.

i have created 24bit bmp's and ace files using rwacetool and it works if i just size to fit the textures on the small boxes.

is the a step im missing to import cropped or tiled textures into railsim?

Thank you