Gmax mapping subject

[OleBoy]

The past few days have been ridiculous with high winds, rain, thunder & lightning, and power outages. Not wanting to practice on the Aeronca K and losing progress, I created a new subject to practice mapping. The hanger has interior walls, floor and roll-up door tracks of which I hope to animate the roll-up door and have it look convincing.

 

[OleBoy]

I seem to be having an issue I don't understand. Following the tutorial "Texture Mapping the North American P-51"

To begin the model has been converted to Editable Mesh. In Top View I've selected all faces of the roof. Next I placed a UVW Mapping modifier to the stack. The roof being 45'x64' with Planer being selected, I doubled it's width (squared) to 130'.
Next I place an UnWrap UVW to the stack and position it, then select Edit. In that window I see the mapped area where I placed it in the upper left corner.

I then choose File/Export Selected, and save it as Roof.MD3.
Next I open LithUnwrap, select Model/Open, and open the Roof.MD3 file. I'm not seeing what I do in Gmax. The file has more vertice (the whole structure?) than is shown in the Edit feature (Unwrap UVW) in Gmax.

I've went through the steps several times. I'm stumped. Hide Poly?

 

[Tako_Kichi]

The problem you are seeing is because you only mapped the roof but exported the entire model, including all the unmapped faces. You will also find it easier to work in poly mode rather than mesh mode.

Do you remember the Teamviewer session we had together a couple of weeks back? When I was showing you mapping I mapped all the faces and placed them around the outside of the 'Unwrap UVW' square. Then when all the faces were mapped I selected all the polys in the model and dropped a new 'Unwrap UVW' modifier on the stack so that I could see all the mapped faces and then I arranged them inside the square for texturing. Only then did I export the model and bring it into LithUnwrap.

Don't forget too that you need to specify the texture sheet size in the options in LithUnwrap before you import your model. Once you have it set it will remember the size but you need to make sure of the size first.

 

[hairyspin]

Adding to Larry's post, you should put a Poly Select (or Mesh Select) modifier on the stack before UVW Mapping a set of polys. In the Poly Select modifier, poly sub-object, you select the roof polys and then the UVW Mapping will apply to these polys only.

The downside - as you will rapidly discover - is that you have to then go on and map the other polys or you get a hideous mess at bottom left of the LithUnwrap-produced bitmap. But keep plugging away! This is the next big hurdle to jump.

 

[Tako_Kichi]

Interesting comment about the 'Poly Select (or Mesh Select) modifier' Tom as I've never used that approach in any of my mapping work (going back over several years). What is it's purpose?

 

[hairyspin]

It's a way to select individual or selected polys from a piece of geometry - doesn't need to be e-mesh or e-poly - and do things with modifiers to the selected poly(s). Milton recommends it in his mapping section of the C162 tut and I'm still learning... :isadizzy:

 

[Tako_Kichi]

Hmmm....OK. I usually just select the polys I need, map them and then hide the polys once mapped (so I don't accidentally grab them again) and grab the next set of polys. Either that or select by 'smoothing group' depending on how I set those up. I've never had the need (yet) to apply a modifier to a mapping selection.

 

[Milton Shupe]

I do not recommend either way actually; I just happen to do it that way as I do not use the UVW Unwrap and editor. It is simply the way I learned the process. Editable Poly and UVW Map, for each set of polys mapped, then send off to LithUnwrap to create the template and texture sheet pixel perfect, then apply the texture.

Having completed the mapping, you can go down the stack and correct any issues by reselecting the Editable poly which highlights the polys at that level, and reapply the UVW Map.

You can do the same with the other technique by adding another UVW Map and Unwrap I think.

I don't know if either technique is better than the other. I can just work faster with mine.

 

[hairyspin]

The more conversations I read with other modellers, the more I see there are at least three different ways to get to the same result with Gmax or Max. The important thing is we get Don off on the right footing. How's it going now?