Need help!! Texturing.

[Tristonwilson12]

i was wondering if there is anyone out there who could texture my mod...

i just want it to look like this

if someone can help that would be great. thanks

[CaptainKipard]

You can do it yourself. First find a high-res texture of burned up metal like this.

I think people sometimes forget that photos exist. Painting everything from scratch is reeeeeally silly.

[Eskandare]

Practice making UV maps, start off with an export of the UV layout, import it into gimp or photo shop and go from there.

[sumghai]

You've already learnt the basics of UV mapping here - you should thus have the skillset needed to decompose your model down to a number of submeshes for more comprehensive UV maps.

[Tristonwilson12]

You've already learnt the basics of UV mapping here - you should thus have the skillset needed to decompose your model down to a number of submeshes for more comprehensive UV maps.

here is the uv its complex....

[riocrokite]

hey reese,

I suggest simplyfing your model first (51k tris is a bit too much for a single part). Then it will be easier for GPU to handle and for you to texture it. I suggest cylinders with max 32 sides (usually 24 is good enough; check stock parts). Even cylinder with 12-16 sides look good when it has smooth shading applied. Personally I wouldn't go beyond 5k tris for a final model but it's just me.

[CaptainKipard]

Also I can see you've made most of that model, or all of it, manifold. I don't think that's necessary. You can save a lot of polys by having intersecting meshes.

[landeTLS]

To start i would simplify your lowpoly. What you have there is a sortof "not really hipoly or lowpoly but something in between"(if that makes any sence). What i mean is that those small details there are too sharp and angled to be captured well in a normalmap(hipoly use) and too angled(and small) to look good as lowpoly geometry(will look alised/jagged as you zoom out). another result of the complex geometry is that you are making the uvs stretched and difficult to work with. Some of the details however ( the recessed window area for example) work well as lowpoly geometry.

Simple Lowpoly workflow tutorial (without using highpoly mesh):

Id suggest starting over by creating a new mesh on top of the old one. Create a cylinder. Pick something like 24-32 sides. Scale the top inward to match the shape and inset+ extrude the top and bottom part using as few operations as you can to define the silouette. delete the left side and add a mirror modifier(do not apply this until you are ready to export to unity).

Create two loops (with the ctrl+r "quickloop tool?". Sorry im mainly a 3dsmax user) located where the top and bottom of the window area start. Now use the vert slide tool (hit the G key twice) to match the curve+outline. Now inset the desired polys, dissolve the lower edge of the inset(so the outer edge becomes a triangle)

now use the cut tool and ctrl+r to create the loops for the windows and inset them. Remembering to both reduce the outline amount a bit to avoid those really angular edges(not necessary but you can put them there if you want the extra detail)

Use floating geometry for the (big) remaining pieces on top (and keep them low geo). For the final stage you can reduce the top part geometry by welding every other edge if you want(going from 32 to 16 sides) this will reduce clutter and remove unessecary geo. Dont worry about tris or ngons on flat areas and single faces that dont curve(have hard edges around them).

For unwrapping just attach all the floating/detached geometry(just the objects not the mesh geometry) or use a plugin like multiedit if you want to keep them seperate at this stage. Create seams and hard edges where there is an edge of > 45 degrees or where there is a cylinder "cap". do an unwrap and edit the results. align the uv edges planar to x/y as much as possible as it will look better with lower res maps. For the sides it should look like a trapezoid. Export the uv layout and import to ps/gimp.

Detach any floating geometry temporarily and Render/bake out an ambient occlusion map for each piece while isolated(turn off rendering on all other pieces while rendering) since you are using blender(no aa or supersampling on maps) render out maps of 2048x2048 then combine them all together in gimp/ps and reduce to 1024x1024. Re-attach all floating geometry.

For painting id start by using materials. create a base material, pick the color that is mostly prominent(almost fully black. Never use completly black) now create a second material and give it a gray color. Select the parts of the mesh that should be gray and apply that material to those. repeat for the remaining colors you want. If there are small patches of color you want that do not correspond to the available geometry then leave those with the base material And paint that in later. Now render/bake out a color map of 1024x1024. Import to the gimp/ps project with the ao map and uv map.

For the actual painting id suggest finding some flat reference textures to simplify the work needed (cgtextures.com has a lot of them but you can also find some with google image search) use layers in photoshop or gimp and combine several images and filters to your liking. Remember to use your ao and color map in multiply mode here. You just want that little bit of variation.

you can also skip this step and just use the color map with the ao map as-is.

now just do a small bit of manual painting in gimp/ps and/or inside blender(any small labels or details etc).

Optional.

Final touchup in blender. Delete all materials create 1 new mat. Apply the ao and color/textures painted in ps/gimp to 2 seperate texture layers add one more layer (call it edge wear etc.). Go to texture painting mode and make that layer active. Now experiment with different brushes and create some nice wear On the edges.

this is also optional as you can probably get away with just the ao+colormap for an ok looking result.

Hopfully this helps

[noonespecial]

THAT looks a great deal like this model I have right here.

Closer examination also looks like your UV map matches the model's topology exactly.

Model Source is NASA 3D Model Repository. Here

[Tristonwilson12]

it is from there i forgot to specify... im sorry for the confusion

[CaptainKipard]

So remind us again how you want to make mods? You took an existing model, and asked someone to texture it for you.

[Tristonwilson12]

no just because its so complex i now how to texture and model i just wanted to see if this specific model would work,.................

- - - Updated - - -

also im working on a SNC dreamchaser and Boeing CST-100 mod..so its hard to do 3 at a time

[CaptainKipard]

also im working on a SNC dreamchaser and Boeing CST-100 mod..so its hard to do 3 at a time

:/ So do one? Actually DO one.

[Tristonwilson12]

i am doing two on my own........

[CaptainKipard]

By the way this explain the manifold mesh. These models were designed for 3D printing, not as a game asset.

It would actually take less effort to make your own version of this rather than trying to optimise it.

[Eskandare]

By the way this explain the manifold mesh. These models were designed for 3D printing, not as a game asset.

It would actually take less effort to make your own version of this rather than trying to optimise it.

I agree, for the complexity of a game and all the parts the video board has to render all at once, models have MUST be low in complexity. The art in game asset design is to use clever texturing techniques to create the illusion of complexity. For example: bump/normal mapping to give the illusion of ridges, panel seams, welds, and etc. The modeling part is easy once you know how the tools work.

Smooth rendering makes faceted objects look smooth and round, so you don't need 20,000 tris to make an object look pretty. All you may need is a few cleverly moddeled meshes and some good painting techniques.

In my opinion modeling and painting is the easy part. Setting up the imported part in Unity and applying all the needed components, animations, emissives, emissive animation, rigging, lights, thrust transform, and etc, are the tedious and hard parts for me, then the tedium of config writing. Once that is all over, I get the pure bliss of satisfaction that I crashed my part into the Mun.

I'm happy KSP doesn't use Oxygen2 for it's modding.

[Eskandare]

Actually... the explanation of how to model and paint sounds more complex then it really is. I learned to model in just a week by playing with the tools in Blender and seeing how each tool works. I made tons of practice models and learnd how to UV each mesh. The more practice you have using the tools the better and quicker you become at modeling and the more efficient you become at making a working piece of art in ksp. Blender may not be as intuitive or user friendly but it is a very powerfuL cad engine I still haven't learned to unlock it's full potential.

Instead of trying to make a full command pod, where you'll want to make an IVA model. Try starting with something simple like a fuel tank. A few cylinder meshes, or one if you chose, then add a UV. You'll start to get an idea of how the tools work. Read up on how to do certain things on the blender wiki. The blender forums have a plethora of information too. Study the geometry of real life objects. Don't just look at it, actually study how each shape fits together and try to replicate that shape in Blender.

Just as a note, the model there you which you pulled off of NASA's website won't fly in Unity. Just the collision mesh alone is going to be a problem for you, and it may not want to compile into a *.mu file. I'll admit I've torn apart meshes from NASA, but to study the shapes to make my own game compatible mesh.

Disclaimer: I will not make it for you, so please don't even think to ask. I have already three active mods I'm working on and I only get an hour a day to work on each. I seriously encourage you to design make, invent your own work. It is more satisfying then trying to import an already existing model that someone else created. Plus you can create whatever is in your imagination.

Edited May 22, 2015 by Eskandare

[landeTLS]

Disclaimer: I will not make it for you, so please don't even think to ask. I have already three active mods I'm working on and I only get an hour a day to work on each. I seriously encourage you to design make, invent your own work. It is more satisfying then trying to import an already existing model that someone else created. Plus you can create whatever is in your imagination.

i cannot agree more with this statement.