Repeating UVs in Blender3D...?
by Mitovo · in Torque 3D Beginner · 04/07/2013 (8:32 am) · 5 replies
Hello,
So, I've decided to give T3D another go. Maybe I can come to terms with my "misgivings" about it, and make it work.
One thing that's going to be key to that is something I've seen discussed among users of Maya/Max/Softimage, but I haven't seen it discussed about Blender3D yet. This is a kind of complicated thing to ask, so hopefully I do a good job explaining it.
Is there a way to have UV textures tile multiple times across an object/face? There's a couple ways to accomplish this inside Blender ("size" and "repeat"), but they aren't preserved when exported to Collada. I've tried both approaches and neither seems to work.
It's apparently possible because you can do it from XSI from what I've seen. So it must be some specific method of defining the UV coords that Collada will support and T3D will "understand".
Now, taking that farther, is there a way to accomplish this across multiple material layers with either alpha masks, or vertex blending, to allow the layers to blend?
You can think of it as how terrain layers are handled. You have multiple layers, and an alpha mask controls where each texture layer is shown or hidden.
Is that kind of control available on meshes/shapes in T3D by chance?
I can go with the alternative of using large UV images, but if I can get a level of tiling across objects, that would be really ideal, especially as my environments are comprised of some large-ish models, and I'd like to maintain as much pixel density as possible.
So... is this do-able, or do I need to devise, or find, a Plan B?
So, I've decided to give T3D another go. Maybe I can come to terms with my "misgivings" about it, and make it work.
One thing that's going to be key to that is something I've seen discussed among users of Maya/Max/Softimage, but I haven't seen it discussed about Blender3D yet. This is a kind of complicated thing to ask, so hopefully I do a good job explaining it.
Is there a way to have UV textures tile multiple times across an object/face? There's a couple ways to accomplish this inside Blender ("size" and "repeat"), but they aren't preserved when exported to Collada. I've tried both approaches and neither seems to work.
It's apparently possible because you can do it from XSI from what I've seen. So it must be some specific method of defining the UV coords that Collada will support and T3D will "understand".
Now, taking that farther, is there a way to accomplish this across multiple material layers with either alpha masks, or vertex blending, to allow the layers to blend?
You can think of it as how terrain layers are handled. You have multiple layers, and an alpha mask controls where each texture layer is shown or hidden.
Is that kind of control available on meshes/shapes in T3D by chance?
I can go with the alternative of using large UV images, but if I can get a level of tiling across objects, that would be really ideal, especially as my environments are comprised of some large-ish models, and I'd like to maintain as much pixel density as possible.
So... is this do-able, or do I need to devise, or find, a Plan B?
About the author
#2
Yeah I can do that, and considered that approach, but it won't get the effect I'm looking achieve, although it does give me an idea of something to try, utilizing multiple texture layers for the material in Blender. I don't know if that will export to Collada, though.
Will have to give it a try.
04/07/2013 (10:17 am)
Thanks for the feedback...Yeah I can do that, and considered that approach, but it won't get the effect I'm looking achieve, although it does give me an idea of something to try, utilizing multiple texture layers for the material in Blender. I don't know if that will export to Collada, though.
Will have to give it a try.
#3
The process I used was basically to create a Blender Material with 3 texture layers... 2 texture layers with a "stencil" layer in between.
For the 2 source textures, I created a UV Channel in Blender and scaled it to 10x, to give them the amount of tiling I wanted.
Then I took a mask image I created, assigned it to a second UV Channel and applied that as a stencil, set to the object, un-scaled, so it's a 1:1 ratio.
I set the Stencil texture between the two color textures.
The effect works great in Blender.
It didn't carry over to T3D in the Collada file, though :-/. It just uses one of the texture layers.
Here's a couple screenshots illustrating it..
Render inside of Blender
Screenshot from T3D
Non-Rendered View in Blender
There's gotta be a way to do this. Anyone have any tips who may have done something like this?
04/07/2013 (11:05 am)
So I gave it a shot, and unfortunately it didn't work :-/The process I used was basically to create a Blender Material with 3 texture layers... 2 texture layers with a "stencil" layer in between.
For the 2 source textures, I created a UV Channel in Blender and scaled it to 10x, to give them the amount of tiling I wanted.
Then I took a mask image I created, assigned it to a second UV Channel and applied that as a stencil, set to the object, un-scaled, so it's a 1:1 ratio.
I set the Stencil texture between the two color textures.
The effect works great in Blender.
It didn't carry over to T3D in the Collada file, though :-/. It just uses one of the texture layers.
Here's a couple screenshots illustrating it..
Render inside of Blender
Screenshot from T3D
Non-Rendered View in Blender
There's gotta be a way to do this. Anyone have any tips who may have done something like this?
#4
Otherwise you have to rethink the way of modeling and texturing a little bit, the textures can be changed later in torque and adjusted with diffuse color, lighting, animation, transparency and so on, important is just the materials assigned and the UV coordinates.
If you want to use something like this in Torque you would have to bake the textures to the image.
Blender has more options than Torque, but you should keep it simple for good performance.
And if you try to do a landscape there, you should use the terrain system.
04/07/2013 (11:22 am)
There are checkboxes when exporting to collada if you want to export the UV layer textures.Otherwise you have to rethink the way of modeling and texturing a little bit, the textures can be changed later in torque and adjusted with diffuse color, lighting, animation, transparency and so on, important is just the materials assigned and the UV coordinates.
If you want to use something like this in Torque you would have to bake the textures to the image.
Blender has more options than Torque, but you should keep it simple for good performance.
And if you try to do a landscape there, you should use the terrain system.
#5
Yeah I tried all that (the checkboxes, etc). It doesn't make a difference.
I don't know if it's a limitation of the Collada format not exporting/recognizing the texture layers or their "settings", or if it's a matter of that information being lost upon importing it into T3D.
I've tried baking the textures, but you invariably lose resolution that way.
I may well end up having to go the route of just having a single UV-mapped image on the object. But, wanted to see there are alternatives that can yield better results, first.
I'm not a fan of T3D's terrain system. Just don't like working with it and, besides, the result I'm trying to get here is one that I'd likely use across all manner of objects (organic ones anyway), so it wouldn't only apply to the ground.
04/07/2013 (11:39 am)
Hiya, Yeah I tried all that (the checkboxes, etc). It doesn't make a difference.
I don't know if it's a limitation of the Collada format not exporting/recognizing the texture layers or their "settings", or if it's a matter of that information being lost upon importing it into T3D.
I've tried baking the textures, but you invariably lose resolution that way.
I may well end up having to go the route of just having a single UV-mapped image on the object. But, wanted to see there are alternatives that can yield better results, first.
I'm not a fan of T3D's terrain system. Just don't like working with it and, besides, the result I'm trying to get here is one that I'd likely use across all manner of objects (organic ones anyway), so it wouldn't only apply to the ground.
Duion