Texture Me!

[franze 196]

Ok folks, here's the deal:

I have a lot of projects sitting around untextured, some serious, some not. Currently I've been trying to get as much as possible done on an OPFOR-BLUFOR low-detail unit package, but I've also got some other tricks in the goodie bag.

Enter the F/A-18E Super Hornet! I won't delve into it right now due to it's current state, but since Nodunit has his hands full working on Apache right now, and I have lots of trouble doing textures, I thought I'd try to contract out for some additional help.

Here's what you need to do:

- Get the texture challenge template.

- Texture it! Have fun with it, make a Blue Angels skin out of it, a real Navy skin out of it, or a fictional one. When finished, upload it to a server or send it to me (contact via email or PM) and I'll upload it for you. If I like your work, I'll follow up with you and maybe we can work something out.

Should you need some reference images, here's a few places to look:

Combat Aircraft F-18 page

FAS F-18 page

Boeing F-18 Image Gallery

Should you find any other resources (especially profile views) feel free to post them here!

Have fun with it!

[mr burns 131]

Sounds good, think the challenge thingie makes me have a run at it.

Found some blueprints on the lowlands warrioe homepage: http://llw.the-dropzone.net/home....mId=309

definately useful for placing markings and bolts

edit: about the template, is it the real one or just sum temp-template? Could´ve used a little bit more zoom, imho

[franze 196]

about the template, is it the real one or just sum temp-template? Could´ve used a little bit more zoom, imho

It's a temporary template that I made in about 5 minutes to fit on a single 1024x1024 sheet. Doesn't break the bank that way - more than one texture will be needed. You can double the size or cut it up into pieces if you want - whatever works for you.

[-TheOne- 0]

How about unwrapping it and then post the UV map, it'll do much better than a view from all sides.

[max power 21]

Agreed. If that is how the uvw's are unwrapped, you'd best add uvw unwrapping to the contest. That really is a terrible waste of texture space. It looks like a cool model, though.

[Serclaes 0]

Small question: Will you use ACES?

I would love to texture it... If i would know how

[Gedis 0]

to help you guys out, i'm downloading pdfs about F-18s, hope you will find those usefull both for modelig and texturing...

I'll upload it when i'll download them, and post download link, but one rule, those who are not serious in helping Franze, don't download, because i'll have to upload and upload again(download limit - 7 times)

[franze 196]

Tell me how to do a UV map and I'll see what I can do.

Quote[/b] ]Small question: Will you use ACES?

That's undetermined as of now.

[nephilim 0]

one hint..

before starting to texture youd better check the blueprints once again and fix that topology.

ive just matched it up with the curretnly avaliable rhino blueprints and they didnt match too well with you model.

the toplogy aswell needs some improvement

specially the canopy frame has alot of screwed and wrong triangulated faces.

the top part of the wings doesnt look too smooth aswell

and the perspective views arent any good aswell for texturing the model.

honestly i dont want to sound rude or wotever

just want to help to improve it

however finish it up first then make a uv layout

oyu can either do this manually in oxygen by spliting parts of the fuselage and laying out that they fit in one screen

or making a uv set in pro tools like maya or max or wotever.

if you cant do this ask someone who has the knowledge

cheers

[deanosbeano 0]

dont knw if its any use, but saw the blue eagles and remembered this pic in bis/oftopic/real photos .

[BlackScorpion 0]

Blue Eagles? Who are they?

Interesting... been waiting for a new F-18 since "the legendary one" (Hudson and Pennywise was it?)...

As you can see from the photo btw, Blue Angels use "traditional" Hornets (C and D), not Super Hornets.

[Hornet85 0]

o Hornets :P love this idea

[franze 196]

before starting to texture youd better check the blueprints once again and fix that topology.

Did you compare it to F/A-18E/F blueprints?

F/A-18E/F has a lot of differences from F/A-18A-D. If you already did compare to blueprints of the E/F, then I'd like to see the blueprints you have! I had to piece together the ones I found for E/F.

Quote[/b] ]

however finish it up first then make a uv layout

oyu can either do this manually in oxygen by spliting parts of the fuselage and laying out that they fit in one screen

or making a uv set in pro tools like maya or max or wotever.

I'll check it out in O2, but Maya/Max/high-cost-modeling-software are off limits for me.

Edit: Remember - the template presented is to demonstrate your work; further texturing can either be your choice or working on templates I do.

[EricJ 759]

Anyway to get the LERXes highlighted on the side views?

[franze 196]

That's affirmative, but I'm going to attempt a new template with suggestions offered above and get a better result (I hope).

[xnodunitx 0]

I could be wrong but I think this would be a form of UV mapping.

http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/6533/body27xa.jpg

Basicly you take the model and break it into pieces and try to get the best angle for texturing,quite fun to put back together but gives the best way to texture things as you pretty much cover every pixel correctly rather than say,what I did with the bottom of the Kiowa.

[nephilim 0]

yea it is

but its a bad example actually

the structure is way broken up eg the tail isnt conencted anymore etc etc

you should try to keep big things together

eg on that ah64uv the main fuselage should have 4main sections

left/right top bottm evetual covered parts are splitted and layed out seperatelly

[offtime 0]

most of texturers have theyr own preferences regarding uv sets

but almost all texturers i know prefer to have brakes in uv's made in places where you have seams on real object

[Delirium 0]

most of texturers have theyr own preferences regarding uv sets

but almost all texturers i know prefer to have brakes in uv's made in places where you have seams on real object

As offtime said it, It all depends on the textured object. Also, you wanna keep good resolution in places that are mostly visible and low res on those obscured or hardly visible.

[meyamoti 0]

Can you give us an example? Of a correctly made UV sheet I mean.

[xnodunitx 0]

I know what she means,I was going to do that but I decided to take another route,rather than having the six or so 1024x1024 textures just to cover the body like last time,I decided that by any means necessary I would get all of the exterior main body portion on a single sheet,one 2048x2048,can't really say I have any arguements.

[JdB 151]

I know what she means,I was going to do that but I decided to take another route,rather than having the six or so 1024x1024 textures just to cover the body like last time,I decided that by any means necessary I would get all of the exterior main body portion on a single sheet,one 2048x2048,can't really say I have any arguements.

One 2048X2048 or six 1024X1024 textures is too much for OFP anyway. A good texturer would use around 2 1024X1024 textures for something like your F-18.

UVW map is all about utilizing every last bit of space on the map, not wasting anything, and about using the strong point of mapping in 3DS MAX (or similar high end program), preventing texturestretching (piece being stretched making it look ugly. I'll post an explanation pic for those interested in mapping.

Model.....nuff said

Mapping done wrong...

....as shown when rendering

Mapping done right...

....as shown when rendering

That is one of the reasons that makes 3DS MAX superiour to O2, the ability to map properly, in O2 you would need to edit the model itself, in 3DS MAX this can be done seperatly in the dedicated unwrapping screen. Goooooooo MAX

Edit #1: of course most of the times the stretching won't be this extreme (done for clarity reasons), but a good addon is an addon without any texturestretching.

Edit #2: No, no one is paying me to pimp 3DS MAX (/Maya/whatever)

[franze 196]

If I had $4,000 to blow, I might buy Max, but I've neither the money nor the time to spend learning Max - so I gotta make do with what I got.

Some hard work and I'm pretty sure I'll get this done.

[echo1 0]

This may sound horribly naive (I know NOTHING about making large hi-res models from scratch, or anything about 3dMax) but perhaps you could download the 30 day trial of Studio Max and see what you can do with it in that time?

[JdB 151]

Also there are programs like Blender that are similar to 3DS MAX, but open source (free) and are more new-userfriendly (never tried it myself though).