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soldier2390

How to "Sharpen" edges of a model without deforming its Textures/UV-Map?

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Hello, community

Sorry if the title is not descriptive enough, I was not sure how to explain this. My problem is I am using the Arma1 5ton (M939) model as the base for my M931 Tractor-Trailer variant that i have been working on for years. However it dont quite fit in with the Arma3 vehicles as its not as highly detailed.

First, to make this simple how would I for example take the wheels of the truck and make them more rounded/detailed so they dont look like Octagons with textures? I would like to make them more detailed and have some kind of definition and shape to them?

Secondly, could I do that with out deforming/messing up the models current Textures/UV-Maps? Also when I was searching for the answers to these questions before I posted here I found out about "Extrude"(?) I think its called, however I read that doing that will distort your textures and you would have to re-UVmap the model!

Dave,

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Hmm I guess thats "rounding" the wheel as opposed to sharpening the edges.

I don't think it would be possible to do what you want in O2, not without having to re-UV certain areas of the wheel itself, just to clarify I assume you want to do something like in the image below?

wheel-1.jpg

So to make the wheel more round, add edges in the middle of each face and then "pull" them out so the wheel appears more round?

You can certainly achieve this in other modelling programs as most allow for edges to be added without much effort, afaik in O2 you'd have to do it another way.

You could delete the faces between the points and the copy/paste those points, then rotate the new points so that they sit between the old ones, you'd then have to create new faces between the points (which would mean UV mapping it all too). Hopefully that along with the image make some sense:

wheel2.jpg

It's not really the fastest method but for O2 it's the only one I could think of I'm afraid.

Hope that helps slightly (or that I;ve even answered the question you asked lol!)

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Thanks STALKER,

That was vary helpful and unfortunately did anwser my question, figured the UV-remapping would need to be done anyways. Now only to find the time to learn that process as I found UV Mapping to be one of the most difficult parts of the process.

Btw just out of curiosity could blender (that free program?) offer me better results? As i only have/vaguely know how to use O2, and can not afford any of them other programs like 3DS(?) Specially with a 1yrd daughter and xmas fastly approaching lol. Im still holding on to any hope I have for being able to do all this while preserving the models original UV map/coordinates, so out side of O2 can that be done? If not no worrys and thanks for the help, time to start searching for UV mapping tutorials again ;)

Dave,

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Glad it helped,

I've only got very brief experience with it but I would imagine blender has the ability to do something similar to what I suggested, I mainly use modo and in that you could easily add edges through things like loop slice/edge slice so it might be work looking for features with similar names in blender.

As for if it retains the UV information, I know that if I edge slice in modo it will add that new edge to the correct position on my UV map, unfortunately I've never done anything involving UVs in blender but it wouldn't surprise me if it did something similar.

With regards to UV mapping itself, O2 is very slow for anything other than small/simple areas (at least for me it is!), 3rd party programs tend to be faster and I imagine that goes for blender too :) With limited experience in modelling and no budget to spend blender is probably the best bet for someone looking to do some 3d work, it has a bit of an odd layout if you've used something else and aren't used to it but for a beginner that shouldn't be as big of a problem. :)

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Nice thanks man, you have been a great help! I will try to study up on blender for now as thats all i can afford lol, and well definitly look into using that for UV mapping. I know you said you use modo but would you happen to know if say I imported my p3d into blender if it would work with the already exsisting arma1 textures already assigned to my p3d? Also what is modo? Is that expensive like 3DS?

P.s. I could upload a picture of what i have so far of the Tractor-Trailers as they are now for shit n giggles, plus if you would look over the trucks you and others here may be able to pick out other issues(none cosmetic)which would help me finially get this out to everyone, tired of u staring at it/worrking on it for the past 5yrs! I was going to start athe new thread for these trucks but atm decided I would like to fix some major issues and hopefully get the trailer to be Articulated and working as a proper tractor trailer should be.

But anyone who knows what they are doing is welcome to get the whole addon from me to view it and help me fix stuff. Just PM me!

Dave,

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Also what is modo? Is that expensive like 3DS?

modo is a modelling program like 3ds MAX although both have their areas of speciality, AFAIK it's not *as* expensive as MAX but isn't cheap by any stretch of the imagination (unless you are using an educational license).

I imported my p3d into blender if it would work with the already exsisting arma1 textures already assigned to my p3d

I'm not sure to be honest, I've never really ported a model from O2 into it so I can't say how well it carries over, I' assume if there is a community p3d pugin for blender it may well work but otherwise I'm not sure. Sorry I can;t be more help with that.

Speaking of not being much help, I'm afraid my knowledge of vehicle modelling for ARMA is very very basic so probably wouldn't be any good at finding any flaws with your work, have only briefly looked at modding vehicles in personally but I'm sure others would be able to help.

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Thanks STALKER,

That was vary helpful and unfortunately did anwser my question, figured the UV-remapping would need to be done anyways. Now only to find the time to learn that process as I found UV Mapping to be one of the most difficult parts of the process.

Btw just out of curiosity could blender (that free program?) offer me better results? As i only have/vaguely know how to use O2, and can not afford any of them other programs like 3DS(?) Specially with a 1yrd daughter and xmas fastly approaching lol. Im still holding on to any hope I have for being able to do all this while preserving the models original UV map/coordinates, so out side of O2 can that be done? If not no worrys and thanks for the help, time to start searching for UV mapping tutorials again ;)

Dave,

Keep in mind, if you're in Uni (or maybe know someone that is? :sneaky: ), Autodesk releases nearly everything they make under an EDU license, with the restriction that it can't be used for commercial works. Just a thought.

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