Textures for New Models Question

[Rivahl]

Okay, I'm on pretty much the last step before finishing my Darth Vader Helmet: texturing it. Like I said in another post, I participated in a two week program on 3d animation, and I focused on model creation, but I would always hand the models off to someone else who was studying texturing and let them do that part. So, I have no idea how to texture it. Obviously, it's a fairly simple texture since most of it is black, but how can I figure out what part of the texture will go where on the model? Or how big the image needs to be? Someone please help me out, here, since once this is done the Vader helmet will be released!

 

Also, I need opinions: what shader would be best for the type of shininess in Darth Vader's helmet? Baremetal or another?

 

EDIT: Okay, I was looking at this stuff, and I have another problem... How do I make masks shine? Whenever I try and alpha them, it simply makes them transparent, and since they aren't in the appearance.2da... I don't really know where or what to change in order to make them shine with alpha layers. HELP.

 

Thanks!

 

-Riv.

[svösh]

This may help you out

 

Create a copy of the entire model ( this is optional if you used nurbs to model your Helmet, or surface tools , no point in coverting it to ed mesh ) so i copy mine and unwrap the copy.

 

Convert the model to editable mesh then Attach each piece one at a time then go to the modifiers list and apply the unwrap uvw modifier on the right hand side in the uv unwrap tool box hit edit. Hit print screen load up in your paint program. Paste the image in a new document crop on the dark blue border of he image.

 

Alternately if you have the texporter unwrap plugin you could use that for the unwrapping.

 

As for dimensions I think the other masks in the erf a pack are 128 X 128 but I’m not 100% sure one thing though you want a square map not a rectangle, to keep with the other files in the game. And keep in mind that tga's are heavy graphic files so a big map will slow down the game on lower end machines.

 

For the shader use cm_Baremetal with a very pale alpha

 

Fastest way for this is copy one of the other channels red, green or blue, rename the copied channel to Alpha 1. Then with only the alpha channel on hit ctrl +L (levels)

Drag the black point over to the white on the bottom slider only until your channel is light gray almost white. The reason for using such a light alpha is your texture is all solid black all you want is the shine uniformly over the whole thing and Baremetal tends to make things look gold because of the yellow highlights on the Baremetal image it’s self, same with gunmetal.

 

hope this helped

 

svösh

[svösh]

You need to make a .txi file for the shader to work

 

So whatever the name of your tga you must make a .txi with the same name

 

Ex: vader_helm.tga

vader_helm.txi

 

copy and paste this code to ntepad save it as *all files and manually add the file extension .txi NOT txt

 

envmaptexture CM_Baremetal

 

 

that shoud do it

 

svösh