Modeling, UVing and Texturing Guidelines for Community made Assets

[Z-trooper]

Of course stuff can be ported back down from later versions of max, but the point is that we have enough stuff to spend our time on than to re smooth a whole model, attach it up both geometry and texture coordinates (yes the seams on the UVs are gooooone). Time we could have been spending on making more of our own models or getting stuff in game that is easier for us to get in game.

[munky91]

I was not saying I knew all the smoothing groups were fixed, I was saying I know messed up smoothing groups is a problem of transferring between versions. As for getting max 9, I only have max 2010 because I was able to get a student license through my school, as much as I would like to buy 9 I have literally no money with which to do so.\
Edit: I'm not debating that it would be FAR preferable to do the whole process in max 9, but if no one steps up to do a model that is needed for a subfaction to exist, what's the harm in them trying?

[Salmonella]

and what about those Ambient Occlusion maps? I mean, it gives so nice shaded aspect, but you must have a 100% non overlapded UV to work, which make you either increase the texture size or decrease quality!

[Z-trooper]

You can still have overlapping UVs with AO maps. but only where the model is symmetrical of course. You either break and drag overlapping faces outside the (1,1) coordinates when baking or you give them a different W value.

[Salmonella]

Originally Posted by [R-DEV]Z-trooper

You can still have overlapping UVs with AO maps. but only where the model is symmetrical of course. You either break and drag overlapping faces outside the (1,1) coordinates when baking or you give them a different W value.

Thanks, it really works, now I can have that nice shade, but still some errors, working on it.

[Z-trooper]

Very nice. Good to see people actually making an effort to include AO.

You need to finish your smoothing groups before baking an AO or else you will be stuck with hard looking edges.

[Salmonella]

hey folks, I'm kind of new on this UV and texture world, I was just trying to find a way to evaluate my uvs rather than checking that coloured squares and overlaps. I wanna to check the efficiency of the texture used, since using my "eye-meter" I can only guess.

I was trying some stuff, dunno if there any other way but here it goes.

You open your uv template in photoshop
open window->"histogram", then into the histogram click in that upper right corner to open the options and select "show stats".
select the magic wand tool, set tolerance to 0 and deselect "continuous"
click in any black(unused area) and check the number of selected pixel.


do a little math, just divide the unused pixel by the total pixels, in this case a 1024*512= 524288
(23125/52428x100 = 4.4% of lost space or a square 152 pixels of textures wasted.

the worst Uvd thing I found on PR is this (won't say what weapon it is to not expose the owner)

this beast uses a 2048x2048 = 4194304
(2283852/4194304)x100 = 54.4% which means that it with a optimized UV can keep the same quality using HALF of the texture...

This "method" don't help you doing a better UV, just tells if you're being efficicent or no, hope it helps...

[Z-trooper]

Good stuff sal, good method.

Thank you for pointing out that we should quality check our own tagged people more in the future.

[Rhino]

ye cheers Salmonella, that UV is pretty god damn awful, need to look into fixing it up.

[Wilkinson]

Originally Posted by [R-DEV]Z-trooper

You can still have overlapping UVs with AO maps. but only where the model is symmetrical of course. You either break and drag overlapping faces outside the (1,1) coordinates when baking or you give them a different W value.

Couldnt you just fix any AO Map Errors in Photoshop? I saw it in a Texturing Video