The Open Part Mod - Week 23/5 - Project started - Texturing

[CaptainKipard]

Week 4 Project

Begins 23rd May and ends Sunday June 1st 6pm PST

To switch things up a bit and allow beginners to make real progress this week we'll be practising materials. Please read the whole thread because some things had to be changed.

When posting progress, please use some kind of album functionality like Imgur albums. Remember to ask questions, critique the work of others and most importantly keep an open mind.

Task

The challenge is to create a material for the 2.5m Xenon tank below. The zip file contains a blend file, a 3ds file and two obj files depending on whether you prefer to deal with split edges or smoothing groups. You will have to unwrap the model appropriately and create two textures: A colour map, with an alpha channel for the specular map and a normal map.

Requirements

The textures must be 1024²px TGAs

You cannot change existing geometry, but you can rework the geometry for the purpose of unwrapping, as long as the model ends up looking exactly the same.

You must name your textures Open25XenonColour.tga and Open25Xenon_NRM.tga respectively. I will be exporting the part using these names.

Your UVs can overlap, but only for faces which would not receive different AO.

You should try to bake Ambient Occlusion and incorporate it into your colour map. This is easy and makes a big difference.

Download the model

Some Useful Links

GNU Image Manipulation Program - Great open source image editor

MaPZone - Procedural texture generator

XNormal - A Program for generating various types of maps and masks

Normalmap - GIMP Plugin for generating normal maps.

UVLayout - Standalone unwrapping program.

Some concepts to keep in mind

• Layers and layer modes
  
• Layer masks
  
• Brush types
  
• Scratches
  
• Wear
  
• Dirt
  
• Material types
  
• Shininess
  

How to Upload your Work

1: I will provide a KSP part model and config for you to upload together with your finished textures.

2: You must also include your texture source files in a separate folder (Photoshop or Gimp native files)

3: Upload with something (Dropbox, Mediafire, Google Drive, Mega...)

4: Post the download and either a Unity screenshot or an in-game screenshot it in the Submissions Thread when it is available.

Remember that everything looks better in KSP when launched compared to the washed out colours in the VAB/SPH.

Rules

• Everything is open. The licensing is up to you (if others can use your stuff) but you must post your source art (as a unity package), screen shots, your finished in-game part with its .cfg and license.txt (if others can use your stuff) packaged in a .zip file so others can learn from what you did. It's not just showing off, it's helping others learn. You also agree if your part wins that week to be included in the best of download pack.
  
• You will use constructive criticism only!
  We are here to learn and to teach, not to put people down. I am not a moderator but I can ban people from the contest that are rude or unhelpful with their comments.
  
• You will be open to critiques and constructive criticism of your work.
  If you are unclear on what those words mean look them up, but you will not take constructive critiques of your work personally.
  
• The Contest will start when the Part type is announced and will last exactly 9 days. The part shouldn't be overly complex and take up your whole week, this is just for people who work at different times and/or like to work in small amounts spread out across the week.
  
• A submission thread will be posted shortly before the deadline for people to submit their entries into. There will then be a poll that will last 5 days.
  
• Additions that were not part of the original requirements may be made by the part author, provided that the stated requirements are not changed.
  
• If you are the winner and picking the next part.
  
  1. The part must be a single part
     
  2. The part must be different visually than any previous part (be creative, if a fuel tank was done last week do a science part this one)
     
  3. Simple enough for beginners to make (The Apollo capsule IVA is *NOT* simple)
     
  4. Have some direction and constraint to it
     

---

Previous Threads:

Radial Triple Fuel Tank - Winner: StarVision

Radial Probe Body - Winner: Ven

Boosted Decoupler - Winner: Cpt. Kipard

Edited May 26, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[Robotengineer]

This is going to be hard...

[CaptainKipard]

This is going to be hard...

Which is why I've made the challenge focused on only this. Actually it's a lot simpler than you realise. I'll be here anyway to give advice and examples. If you or anyone has any problems just ask.

I recommend you start with baking AO, and then just start adding layers. Not everything has to be on a specific layer, but you'll still need to keep some things separate. If anyone has problems, download all of my previous submissions, and look through all the xcf files (those are native GIMP files) while keeping in mind those concepts I listed, and try to emulate what you see.

[darkside]

Progress report.

UVs, AO and rendered model.

This AO map is a placeholder, it probably won't be used in the final result.

Next step is to create some high res details and bake them to AO and normal maps.

Also, smoothing groups were all over the place, maybe they didn't load properly for me. Unless they were made that way intentionally, which would mean I don't completely understand how smoothing groups work (could be the case). Anyway, I redone them completely, I hope that's ok. Didn't change the mesh itself.

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[Robotengineer]

What are these blue lines?

By the way nice texture darkside.

[darkside]

By the way nice texture darkside.

Thanks, but that's just an ambient occlusion map, texture is coming soon, baking more detailed AO right now. Unfortunately it takes about 30 minutes to render high poly mesh I made for it, and I have rendered it few times already while tweaking stuff. Probably not worth it though, details turned out to be not so great, but I am doing it anyway.

[Ven]

UVs cannot overlap.

WHY! My only hope to retain my sanity! Not to mention time wasted texturing parts individually that will just end up looking the same!

[darkside]

WHY! My only hope to retain my sanity! Not to mention time wasted texturing parts individually that will just end up looking the same!

I am actually glad. I hate reusing UV space. Yes it may allow higher resolution but it often leads to bad things at a stage when I'd rather not go back and redo everything from the beginning. Many times I told myself that I will not do that, but in a model like this with a lot of identical parts I'd probably reuse UVs if it weren't for the rule against it.

BTW can't you just texture one part and copy/paste it?

[Ven]

I am actually glad. I hate reusing UV space. Yes it may allow higher resolution but it often leads to bad things at a stage when I'd rather not go back and redo everything from the beginning. Many times I told myself that I will not do that, but in a model like this with a lot of identical parts I'd probably reuse UVs if it weren't for the rule against it.

BTW can't you just texture one part and copy/paste it?

I could but that would require copy-pasting 10+ layers for just one space.

[Robotengineer]

How do I unwrap it like darkside did? I have little knowledge of how to use seams to get a custom lay out.

[darkside]

How do I unwrap it like darkside did? I have little knowledge of how to use seams to get a custom lay out.

Most 3D editors have built in tools for that, but I have no idea about how to unwrap in Blender (is that what you're using?)

There are also many separate programs for unwrapping meshes, I personally use a program called UVLayout.

[Robotengineer]

I'm using blender, and it has auto-unwrapping, but the auto unwrap isn't that great, I can try and use it though.

Hmm, funny thing happened, I just hit bake and it gave me this.

Don't know how that happened, but it looks kinda cool.

Edited May 24, 2014 by Robotengineer
Update.

[Moon Goddess]

Uh, I wish you hadn't overwritten the default view in Blender, I know enough to turn the default view into how I like to work with it, but I honestly don't know how to get what you've done back to how I like to work

[Robotengineer]

Uh, I wish you hadn't overwritten the default view in Blender, I know enough to turn the default view into how I like to work with it, but I honestly don't know how to get what you've done back to how I like to work

I think you hover over the break between windows and there should be a little slide-arrow and right click on it and hit join area. I'm on a mac so it may be different depending on your OS.

[Robotengineer]

What will be the amount of xenon the tank can hold?

[CaptainKipard]

What are these blue lines?

Those are sharp edges. The model has an Edge Split modifier applied to it.

WHY! My only hope to retain my sanity! Not to mention time wasted texturing parts individually that will just end up looking the same!

This is precisely why I said in requirements that you can rework the model for the purposes of unwrapping.

Overlapping UVs very often result in broken AO maps.

A few words on complexity: This model may seem complex but complexity is about the homogeneity of parts. Delete all the duplicate parts of that model and you'll see just how simple it is. Then unwrap the part to be duplicated, and duplicate it the way it was before.

Uh, I wish you hadn't overwritten the default view in Blender, I know enough to turn the default view into how I like to work with it, but I honestly don't know how to get what you've done back to how I like to work

And I wished I had, so I did. If you want to use your own views you can open Blender in a normal way and append the object from my blend file.

What will be the amount of xenon the tank can hold?

I haven't decided yet. It will be proportionally scaled to what the smaller tanks contain.

Edited May 25, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[blizzy78]

A few words on complexity: This model may seem complex but complexity is about the homogeneity of parts. Delete all the duplicate parts of that model and you'll see just how simple it is. Then unwrap the part to be duplicated, and duplicate it the way it was before.

Not sure what you're saying here. For example, unwrapping one of the struts on the side, then duplicating it to make it all look like in the OP would lead to reuse of texture space, no? Isn't that against your rule?

[CaptainKipard]

Not sure what you're saying here. For example, unwrapping one of the struts on the side, then duplicating it to make it all look like in the OP would lead to reuse of texture space, no? Isn't that against your rule?

Oh! Thanks for paying attention. You're right. What I failed to say is the last step. Highlight each of the new bits of geometry in 3D view, and move the UVs somewhere else.

@Robotengineer

Your AO map looks very grainy. You can make it look smoother by increasing the sampling. If you're working with blender go to the World tab, scroll down to Gather, an slide Samples to about 20.

Also @Everyone, play around with the settings under Gather, to find something realistic. The default values aren't very good.

Edited May 25, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[blizzy78]

Hmm, funny thing happened, I just hit bake and it gave me this.

http://i.imgur.com/N6xbPam.png

Don't know how that happened, but it looks kinda cool.

In World settings under Gather, set it to use "Approximate" mode instead of "Raytrace." This gives much better results. It also helps to reduce Sampling "Error" down to the minimum (just enter 0) to make it look much better. Be advised that this takes much longer to render, so turn it back to 0.25 or something for test renders.

go to the World tab, scroll down to Gather, an slide Samples to about 20.

Samples only goes to 10 max for me. I left it at the default 1 while decreasing errors to the minimum.

Edit: Ah, this is in "Approximate" mode. "Samples" is different for Raytrace mode.

Edited May 25, 2014 by blizzy78

[CaptainKipard]

I personally use a program called UVLayout.

I've never seen this program, but it looks interesting. I'll add it to the links in the OP.

[mordin86]

this tank looks very cool, just started working on AO:

now I have to think what kind of look I want for the texture itself

Edited May 25, 2014 by mordin86

[CaptainKipard]

I've decided that I'll do this along with everyone else. I'll show what I'm doing and explain why I'm doing it. Obviously I'm not entering it in the competition, I just hope people can learn something.

First thing is unwrapping obviously.

Image #1

This shows how I unwrapped the spherical tank. A larger number of sections decreases the amount of texture warping, but increases number of texture seams, which can sometimes be problematic. This is personal preference but I think 8 sections is a good balance. Here I've also kept the middle two face loops completely connected and edited those UVs to be a perfect rectangle, in case I want to easily add a horizontal texture later on, like text or a straight line.

You can also see here the Ambient Occlusion map with the settings I used. The default settings make AO really blurred, so I decreased the Attenuation distance to 20cm. I think that's more realistic that way.

The ring tops and bottoms are continuous, again to keep texture seaming to a minimum. It's not the most efficient but it makes for nicer textures.

Image #2

This shows the way I've unwrapped that bent pipe section. This way isn't always necessary, but keeping all the UVs parallel and perpendicular allows you do easily make textures that look like they're made of interlocking rings (like those shower head bendy hoses for example). This works best when the pipe was made mathematically perfect, with a bezier curve for example.

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Edited May 31, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[Ven]

ok, so I just about finished the texture, here's the Ao maps. map A is the first one I did, and not a single uv overlap:

Map B is the result of me scrapping the old texture.

The near final texture rendered in Unity:

[Robotengineer]

Nice Ven! I feel like I'm falling behind. I haven't even decided what sort of tank I want it too look like, thinking about something along the lines of Nertea's near future propulsion Xenon tanks.

[Ven]

Nice Ven! I feel like I'm falling behind. I haven't even decided what sort of tank I want it too look like, thinking about something along the lines of Nertea's near future propulsion Xenon tanks.

Well, I guess we're using the same references then. xD