headus 3D tools

[dresdenwitch]

I found a small flaw with my birdbath so decided to start from scratch.
Made sure everything in .obj was right and that the materials were all there, I'm using Silo. Saved as .obj. and put into UVLayout. Cut it up and moved with 'D' key. Used the 'F' key to flatten all the pieces and then 'packed' then after running optimise. Saved as .tif. I then put the .obj into Poser and imported. So far all's looking good. Checked in the material room and all the pieces are there. Went into Photoshop and opened the .tif and thought I would check the placement by adding a couple of numbers to the .tif.

Now this is what's happening. Where am I going wrong? It all went so well the first time I did this birdbath.

[GeoffRiley]

Intriguing... two things occur to me - first is are you 100% certain that you saved the obj file after rearranging the UV and before saving the tif; and second are you 100% certain that you edited the right tif.

Since you say that you loaded it up in the materials room, I assume everything was aligning then - so that leave the possibility of using the incorrect tif.

When you edited the tif did you apply any form of resizing - or did Photoshop save the tif with a larger canvas? When you added your text, did any of the text have bounding boxes that overlapped the edges of the original canvas for example?

Check the properties of image file and make sure that the dimensions are still the same as the original export, if not then we have the answer. If so, then try loading up the tif back in Photoshop, then load the original export into a second layer - turn down the opacity and check if the two match. If they do, then I'm running out of ideas.

Let me know what sort of things you find - if anything.

Kind regards,
Geoff

[dresdenwitch]

sometimes I wonder how I ever made it this far in life.

I saved it when it first went into UVL. and then saved it again before I .tif it.
and of cause it worked.

Still I'm getting a good forum list of things to keep in mind.

Thank you so much Geoff, I had been trying to fix it half of last night and again this morning.

[dresdenwitch]

One more question.

Is there any way of making the box bigger? I don't want to start moving the pattern around (and there's usually not much room to any way) but I find that the program doesn't really leave enough room. I usually like to (when I texturing) leave a little of the texture over hanging the pattern so that I can be sure of covering the whole item.

[GeoffRiley]

Okay, no worries - as I said before you need to get used to a work flow so that all the steps fall naturally into place, don't worry about it, if you're anything like me you'll make some far bigger gaffs than that before you get settled!

On the Render tab, there's a number next to the specimen filename alongside the Save button - that specifies the size of the tif that will be saved. The default is 256x256 which is fine for a quick test, but not much use for a full map.

If you click on the little right arrow, the number will climb through 512, 1k, 2k, 4k and 8k. If you require a higher resolution you just type in the required size, for example 16k or 32k - just type it, don't press enter! - but remember that at these resolutions it's an awful lot of work for the renderer so you only need it for something that is going to be extremely detailed in a foreground position.

Keep up the good work, you're doing great.

Kind regards,
Geoff

[GeoffRiley]

Ah... Just realised I answered the wrong question!

You're wanting to leave gaps between the shells within the UV map.

Nice and easy to do: on the pack tab, there's a 'Bleed' option, if you increase that from the default of 1, then you'll get more and more gapping between shells when you do a pack operation. The actual number you want to use will depend upon your target map resolution too, so you might want to experiment with what value suits your requirement.

That'll sort you out.

Kind regards,
Geoff

[dresdenwitch]

thanks Geoff. I have been putting up the resolutions to the 5?? cause I liked the result better didn't know that's what it meant. So the higher resolutions is really for making better textures? Something I'll have to keep in mind when I make clothing.

and thank you so much for the advice on the 'bleed' will definitely be looking into that next time I go in there.

Here's the final result which I couldn't have done without your help.
Thank you so much.

[headus]

Regarding the bleed, there's a "Show Shell Bleeds" option under the Pack panel. If you tick that, UVLayout will draw a gray border around each shell showing roughly what the current bleed really means in the context of the current pack resolution setting. You may need to zoom in to see that bleed border at low settings, but it'll become more obvious as you increase the bleed value.

[dresdenwitch]

Thank you Phil. all in put greatly appreciated.

[GeoffRiley]

Looks fabulous, and my little friend heartily approves too!

Geoff

[dresdenwitch]

hehehe.. thank you