Blender-exported model texture error

[Nutcase Unleaded]

Oh lord, where did I go SO WRONG?!

Let me sum this up quickly: I made the actual model work well. The collision works, the model works, but the texture does not wrap around the model; it is repeated on every triangle.

Here\'s the model itself, rendered in blender, and its texture.

It\'s supposed to be a helmet. I\'m going to make the rest of the Kerbonaut and put three of them each on a seat attached to a plate.

Apparently, KSP thinks that\'s a silly idea with this particular model. Same thing happens in the game as in the SDK.

It may not be immediately visible, but when I booted up the game and zoomed in on the part, it turned out that instead of wrapping around the model like it did in the Blender render, it repeated the texture for every single triangle. I\'ve honestly got no clue as to what caused this, and after fiddling around with the CFG, I can only guess it\'s a problem with how I made it in Blender. Somehow. I really hope it\'s not, though. Same thing happened with another part I made, though that look actually went well with it.

Does anyone know what causes this? I\'ve worked quite hard to learn Blender, and it\'d be a shame for all the research I\'ve done into making models and stuff for KSP to have gone to waste.

[GeorgeTirebiter]

It looks like your UV mapping got reset somehow. Unfortunately, that means you\'ll probably need to unwrap the part again.

Also, you should note that UV mapping is only one of many ways that Blender\'s renderer can assign textures (and it\'s not the default method), so a rendered image won\'t necessarily match how the part will look in KSP.

[Nutcase Unleaded]

I got to admit, I really don\'t know what I\'m doing when it comes to the textures. I can\'t even get the... I\'m guessing the word is exploded view of the texture to come up in the UV-mapping, so I\'m sort of flying blind. All the tutorials are for versions older than 2.60.

Whatever I did sort of made it wrap around the entire picture, but only so strangely, as you can see.

You said There were other ways to texture it than UV mapping, right? I managed to get something called 'Vertex Paint' to work before, but what else is there? I\'m getting kind of desperate now.

[Tiberion]

make sure to unwrap, 'sphere projection' or cylinder projection, etc for whatever your object matches most, then after clicking it, just below open the unwrap options and change 'Direction' to Align to object, that should make it laid out in a reasonable pattern on the 2d grid, you might need to scale it to make it fit.

Be sure to watch Technical Ben\'s video tutorial in a thread in this very forum, its quite helpful.

Remember, each face is mapped to the whole image by default, so if you miss a face in your unwrap, it\'ll have that weird image on it.

[Technical Ben]

Are you sure you applied a material as well as UV projection? If you used the 'Unwrap' option, and saved then exported, it should export with UV-Co-ordinated. Oh, and you need to save the texture as a 32bit (so it has an alpha channel) .png in blender or a image editing program for KSP to find it. Make sure the .png file is in the correct folder and your part.cfg file has the correct names to show the game where to look.

If you want to upload the file to here, I can check it for you and how to correct it. I might even be able to suggest a little 'cheat' for making almost transparent faces for the glass. That\'s obviously a helmet right!?

[Nutcase Unleaded]

Are you sure you applied a material as well as UV projection? If you used the 'Unwrap' option, and saved then exported, it should export with UV-Co-ordinated. Oh, and you need to save the texture as a 32bit (so it has an alpha channel) .png in blender or a image editing program for KSP to find it. Make sure the .png file is in the correct folder and your part.cfg file has the correct names to show the game where to look.

My biggest problem is that there\'s no way to pull up the 2-D UV mapping window that I know of in Blender 2.60. Which is the first edition of Blender I\'ve used that I actually used to some success.

Also, nothing happens when I press the UV Unwrap button that I can tell. What does it do exactly? Is there something wrong with my copy of blender, or does it normally cause the UV-mapping window to come up? If so, what do I download to make it work?

If you want to upload the file to here, I can check it for you and how to correct it. I might even be able to suggest a little 'cheat' for making almost transparent faces for the glass. That\'s obviously a helmet right!?

I figured it would be the helmet shield that keeps their eyes from frying out, Honestly, though; I don\'t want to bother with modeling their faces, especially since I\'m already awful at even drawing faces, which won\'t match up with the pilots\' faces in the first place. I don\'t want to have to deal with any more details than I need to.

[GeorgeTirebiter]

My biggest problem is that there\'s no way to pull up the 2-D UV mapping window that I know of in Blender 2.60.

Yeah, that could be a problem. Try this: in the far left side of the menubar at the bottom of the 3D window there\'s a little button with a white cube and an up/down arrow. Click on that, and select 'UV/Image Editor' from the menu that pops up.

You can also have the 3D and UV views open at the same time by splitting the window. In the upper-right and lower-left corner of the viewport is a diagonal 'grip' (when you hover over it the mouse cursor changes to a plus sign). Click-drag it into the viewport (as though you were peeling it away to reveal something hidden underneath) to divide the window, then change one side to the UV editor.

[Technical Ben]

The first thing I do is turn the animation window (at the bottom) into a UV window in blender. Unless I am doing animation...

[Nutcase Unleaded]

Thanks, guys. The model renders properly, now. And thanks to you, I can move on to more interesting and useful projects. Hopefully, I\'ll have a parts pack up in a few days.

Until then, good luck not crashing in a catastrophic space accident.