18 réponses à ce sujet

[MerricksDad]

I'm tired of custom creating skins for NWN in the fashion I have been doing it for years. I'm looking for a newer program, or extension to an existing program, which can make texture creation for characters much easier. What are you all using right now in your various NWN and non-NWN creations?

[The Mad Poet]

I use Photoshop. Have since Photoshop 3.0. Have to use Gimp to work with PLT's, but I'm not fond of Gimp.

 

Though I don't use a drawing tablet. Many who do like Paint Shop Pro. Not sure how you make your textures.

[Tonden_Ockay]

I tried using pictures but that sucked

 

So for now I have only used textures from other haks and changed them up a bit using paint.net

 

I have thought of trying to get textures from Skyrim and The Witcher, but haven't done it as of yet. As for making my own from scratch, I haven't even tried it yet.   

[MerricksDad]

Oh no, I meant in a program like GMAX or 3DS max, is there something better than chilliskinner by now? Chilliskinner is great, but with high poly objects, mostly all I get is errors, and objects with their bounds set far outside the actual mesh size, full of internal errors.

 

As for textures, I use a combination of Gimp2 and PSP7. I do most of the work inside PSP, while I work on 4-sided edge matching (seamless textures) with Gimp. I don't like the majority of what gimp has other than that, and I am very used to doing a lot of stuff manually with PSP. I previously had photoshop, but I seem to have lost the free older version installer I had. I used that for the white-balance function which I liked. The similar function in PSP does not work the same as the PSP version I had. I also had fractal painter 4 for a while, but like the PS, I lost the installer for that. It had some interesting automatic functions, like drawing space warps and holes in your texture. While I didn't use the entire texture when I used those functions, I did cut and paste some of those FP4 images into layers of my other textures. FP4 was very mathy and processor intensive, but it had functions I didn't have with the rest of my setup.

 

Now I'm just down to importing hundreds of google textures and mixing 20 or so layers to produce a texture I want. I often take a non-seamless texture, put it in gimp, make it seamless in 4 directions, copy it back as a layer in PSP, and then cut out with feathering some sections I don't want to see repeated mid-texture. If needed, I then patch and noise up the middle with hard-lined other textures.

[NWN_baba yaga]

I simply use the unwrapper tool that comes with 3dsmax. And i unwrap almost anything... even branches for trees because aligning textures along the right direction is essential for me and it has become just routine after so long. So unwrapper tool for skins how complex they might be (i detach a lot of polys and flatten/ unfold them then, move them to a spot where other parts will not be, attach them again and move them all once completed into the texture border... hope that made sense...

 

For textures just photoshop and yes Google.... and 3dripperDX ... it´s a secret but that app is awesome... i even ripped stuff from old ultima ascension.... . Not that I advocate ripping things and just use them but it´s always nice to see how other designers do their environments. You can also play test in wireframe mode to get a clear picture how everything is modeled btw.

 

Only thing that bothers me is i have no "diamond mapping" option with my 3dsmax version. I guess thats what most people use for unwrapping high poly models. Selecting the "edges" only and then apply the diamond unwrapper... voila!

[MerricksDad]

It sounds a lot like the unwrapper you are using is very similar to the one unwrapper function built onto the GMAX chilliskinner. Wish I had the higher version. Maybe I will have to tinker with chilliskinner to see about working the bugs out. I keep getting index zero errors if the model is high poly. Also unwrapping at anything below 30 degrees makes a mess, but 30 degrees on high poly leaves a lot of warped faces when you apply the texture. Trying to find a middle ground without the bugs, and without paying for a higher level program.

 

If I had more income, I would buy the full newest MAX in a heartbeat.

[Frush O'Suggill]

You probably already know this, but Autodesk does now offer a subscription service for 3dsMax if that interests you at all. I think it was just over 100.00 USD a month the last time I checked.

[MerricksDad]

ouch! My bank account doesn't have that much free flow

[3RavensMore]

You can also get a free 3 year license if your a student, educator, or tutor.  MD you have a boy, so I think you qualify.  He certainly gets a good education from you.  You tutor him in the ways of the force...er...life.  And I'm certain he'll give you an education as well--perhaps not always pleasant mind you.  So, educator, tutor, and student--the trifecta--you definitely qualify. 

[MerricksDad]

I may be a student soon myself, so I might wait a sec.

[Frush O'Suggill]

What about 3d Coat? It's 90.00 for a hobbyist version, and I've heard some good things about it. It's supposed to have a pretty good uv mapper.

[CaveGnome]

Sometimes i use TextureMaker to create placeable and tile textures. It's old but easy to use, and you can download an evaluation version if you like. The site as a lot of texture ressources, tutorials and utilities (Texture Discovery, pluggins, etc.) to boot.

 

Here:

 

http://www.texturemaker.com/news.php

[Shemsu-Heru]

Blender and Zbrush have an option which allows to paint the texture directly over the model....

[MerricksDad]

I did see that on Zbrush when I was reading up on it in various magazines. It seems fascinating.

 

I have not tried blender since like 7 years ago, or thereabouts.

[Shemsu-Heru]

I neither use that programs. So I don' Know too much about them. But, I certainly know that they have that option...

[TheOneBlackRider]

I simply use the unwrapper tool that comes with 3dsmax. And i unwrap almost anything... even branches for trees because aligning textures along the right direction is essential for me and it has become just routine after so long. So unwrapper tool for skins how complex they might be (i detach a lot of polys and flatten/ unfold them then, move them to a spot where other parts will not be, attach them again and move them all once completed into the texture border... hope that made sense...

 

Now this sounds VERY interesting! But sadly, I can't completely follow...

I saw, that the ChilliSkinner has a flattening function, but I never used it, because I don't know, who to use it. I know Unwrap, but not the flattening part.

Maybe you could be more clear (eg. with sceens ) on how you use flatten with your branches (plus the detach and move to a spot part) and maybe then I try to do it with Chilli? Or maybe somebody can TUT this with Chilli?

[MerricksDad]

The chilli skinner basically works like this

 

1) cuts the object into sub objects based on an angle between two faces

2) stores the original object (but hidden)

3) optimizes the sub objects (not sure what that means)

4) rotates the sub objects so they have an upward (positive Z) facing for the center (average or mean or some other reasoning) of the sub object

5) spaces the sub objects out in such a way, based on size, so that they can be texturized in a 2d plane

6) flattens the faces to all zero z so there is no stretching on the surface after texture is applied

 

now you apply the texture plane to the flattened objects

 

7) remembers the vertex to vertex position of the original object and moves the newly texturized vertices to those exact coordinates, reforming the object

8) welds it all back together fully texturized

 

I mean it is great, if not for the errors I keep getting on complex objects

[-Paganini-]

3D Coat is a great.

[TheOneBlackRider]

@ MerricksDad & ChilliSkinner (#17)

Thanks! I did a quick test and - failed. Will need to tinker a bit more to understand it, I guess.