Oxygen's UVEditor

[Col. Faulkner 0]

Are there any instructions or tutorials available for using the

Oxygen 2 UVEditor? I cannot work out how one uses this to

map the faces of an object onto a flat plane - all it seems to

do is redraw the faces as they appear in the Buldozer view.

[scars09 9]

create 2 animphases, 0 and 1.

select what should be unwrapped, change to animphase 1 and unwrap the object with structures/unwrap.

change to uv editor press strg/f2 and select a texture, then press planar mapping to get the flat structure in the uveditor.

animphase 1 is the unwrapped structure, animphase 0 the complete object. after uv mapping you delete the animphase1, textures are applied on animphase 0, delete aswell that animphase aswell after mapping.

[Col. Faulkner 0]

Thanks for the explanation, but I still cannot follow it.

I can get as far as trying "Surfaces->unwrap structure..."

but that just results in a jumbled mess, no matter how

simple an object I try it on.

[scars09 9]

if unwrap is correct you will see the structure from the top view only. try it with a cube and you will see. BIS mentioned a basic unwrap function, thats why you have to rotate sections and stuff after unwrapping alot.

[rip31st 98]

Let me make it easy. First off build your model. Secondly think of the UV mapper as a painter's canvas.

1.) Create a .png in your favorite paint program (psp, ms paint, adobe, gimp, etc...) Make that image either 512x512, 1024x1024 or 2048x2048. Make is so that image has a default background...can be any color. DO not use a transparent background as it will result in a semi transparent model.

2.) Use tex2view ( one of BIS's tool's ) to convert it to a .paa image file that arma uses.

3.) Go into o2 and select or highlight your model in the model's base LOD ( 0001 ). Then background map the entire model with it. This way that blank texture you created is now associated and mapped to the model. To do that all you have to do is hit "A" and right click to load the texture. Then stretch it out over your model and hit "B". Hit "A" again to return to normal mode.

4.) Start selecting faces you want to paint from your model. The way you see them in whatever view your in is how they will appear in the UV editor. So, if you are painting the side of a truck, just grab the surfaces from the side of the truck you want to paint.

5.) Open the UV editor. hilight and delete everything you see. Click edit and select "selection to UV". This bring's the side of the truck you just selected into the UV mapper and onto that artists canvas we were talking about. You can stretch that sucker out and place it anywhere you'd like. It doesn't have to be in the same square.

6.) In the UV editor click "view" and select your texture you made. IT should appear in the short list since you already mapped it to the model. It will now show you that texture in the UV editor.

7.) From there you can continue to grab surfaces you want on your canvas and bring them into the UV editor to achieve the desired result.

8.) You can view the results as you go along in bulldozer until your entire model is mapped to the UV editor.

This unwrap function in o2 is for the horses. - Just my opinion. There is no rhyme or reason to it. I personally try to avoid it. Unwrapping models can be done in several other programs. I don't unwrap models myself as the UV mapping process itself is time consuming if you plan on being very detailed. I try to keep it simple and cut back on time by only mapping from four sides of my models. Depending how curvy or how much detail your model contains will dictate how many faces you need to UV Map to give a decent appearance.

Here's an example of bringing the faces from o2 into the UV editor notice how I didn't stay inside the box at the bottom, again you can put them anywhere:

Here is the same shot with the texture selected from the view option:

Here is the finished product:

*I don't claim to be an artist - In fact I'm far from it. I'm just showing you how I do it.

Good luck.

[nuxil 2]

Rip31st Nice

adding thouse pictures really helps understanding how it works

Lock this topic pls

[fabiantronc 0]

woow thanks Rip31st

Can you make a basic tutorial anti-noobs?

I followed the basic tutorial of Chris Young about UV map and the method it's a little different, but I think your method it's better, just I need a tutorial with pics and examples.

Well, if you make a tutorial you will make me very happy mate

[BraTTy 0]

create 2 animphases, 0 and 1.

select what should be unwrapped, change to animphase 1 and unwrap the object with structures/unwrap.

change to uv editor press strg/f2 and select a texture, then press planar mapping to get the flat structure in the uveditor.

animphase 1 is the unwrapped structure, animphase 0 the complete object. after uv mapping you delete the animphase1, textures are applied on animphase 0, delete aswell that animphase aswell after mapping.

Thank you for that...finally an explanation on how to put the stuff back together.

Quote[/b] ]Col. Faulkner:

Thanks for the explanation, but I still cannot follow it.

I can get as far as trying "Surfaces->unwrap structure..."

but that just results in a jumbled mess, no matter how

simple an object I try it on.

Ya I know.If the part is attached to other vertices it ends up a jumbo mess.

Unwrapping works from the facing view. Say you are doing a vehicle hood that is sloped at outer faces..Use the top down view and unwrap it and it will lay out flat.

However if its attached with other parts it creates the mess.

Unwrapping a wheel seems to work well looking at it from side

Scars09...any tips on unwrapping this connecting stuff.I see you say you have to rotate and such,is that the only way ?

Rip31st..Thanks very much for the tips,that is a completely different way I was doing it.Good help to see ways of doing it.

You dont unwrap the plane hull and its ok? Not stretched on top and bottom?

I did my planes planar method in past,working the angled pieces best I could.

I see with current Oxygen has a "look at face" feature and that helps.Angles the model so you are able to planar map the face

Quote[/b] ]

Are there any instructions or tutorials available for using the

Oxygen 2 UVEditor

Good place to post some links:

http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....4&hl=uv

http://www.chris-young.info/cyp/spip/spip.php?article28

Heres a blender unwrap tutorial:

http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/HowTo:Unwrap_in_Blender

[Col. Faulkner 0]

Thanks for the replies everyone (Scars09, Rip31st and Bratty).

I'll report back once I've had a chance to give it another try

in the light of your information.

[scars09 9]

@bratty

you can split the structure in animphase 1 with structures/split (same path as find non closed) to make it easier for o2 to unwrap.

i think locking axis can be used aswell, but didnt tried that. going back to animphase0 will reconnect the splittet structures again.

[VXR 9]

I might be able to create a small video tutorial tomorrow for unwrapping a basic cillinder.

I aint very hard to unwrap models in o2, once you know how to do it you will never forget it.

[[aps]gnat 28]

I might be able to create a small video tutorial tomorrow for unwrapping a basic cillinder.  

I aint very hard to unwrap models in o2, once you know how to do it you will never forget it.

Yes Please !!!

[Col. Faulkner 0]

I might be able to create a small video tutorial tomorrow for unwrapping a basic cillinder.  

I'd very much appreciate that too, thanks!

[Messiah 2]

The same method I was taught I think, and finally something I can pass on now other work has finished. I can't quite be bothered to go as far as a video, but a quick how to unwrap a cylinder manually should give you the basic gist of how to unwrap things in O2.

This is a very quick and basic tute, so feel free to ask for clarifications.

1. Create a basic cylinder (F8, 10 sides)

2. Go to window->animation to show the keyframe tab, and right click on it and create 2 new keyframes. Once done, double click on the second keyframe to begin editing in that keyframe.

3. In the view port that faces the rounded side of the cylinder, select the top pair of vertexes, press C and then Shift+C to get something similar to the screenshot.

4. Select the whole cylinder end on the side you selected the pair of vertexes and press Pause/Break to split topology. Keeping the faces selected, use the 2d rotate function to rotate the faces so they become horizontal (quick tip: + values are anticlockwise, and minus values are clockwise)

5. Rinse and repeat on the other end cap of the cylinder.

6. Go over to the viewport that shows the cylinder side on and select one of the top pairs of vertexes. Press C to place the pin on them.

7. In a similar fashion to the end caps, select the faces you want to break. This is where you will decide, on the cylinder, where the break point of the texture is, so its wise to make the join somewhere less obvious so that the join in the texture is a little hidden. Press Pause/Break to split the faces as before.

8. Two ways to begin unwrapping the cylinder now. Because its a 10 sided cylinder, we know that each edge is 36 degrees off from its neighbour. So we can use the 2D rotate function to rotate the still selected faces 36 degrees. The downside is, that this takes longer, and you dont have to be superbly accurate unwrapping these, so I tend to prefer to use free rotate (Ctrl + R Click)

9/10. What you're aiming to do is rotate each face so it becomes horizontal. So we've rotated the first face, and now we need to continue with the rest. All you need to do is select the vertexes where the next face attaches to the one you've made horizontal, press C to apply the pin to those vertexes, and then reselect the remaining faces and rotate them 36 degrees again. Continue along the entire line until those faces are flat.

11. Repeat for the other faces.

12. If you now look at your top view, the cylinder will be unwrapped.

13. Double clicking on the 0.00 keyframe will return the cylinder to its original form, EXCEPT that the faces we split will still be split.

14. In the unwrapped keyframe, I apply a texture on the top down viewport to the unwrapped cylinder.

15/16. This is how it should look in buldozer, unwrapped, and wrapped (switching between keyframes). What you may notice is that the cylinder lighting will be a bit odd when things are unwrapped. This will be fixed once you merge the faces back together 99% of the time, or you'll just have to resharpen/resmooth the odd face.

17. If we click on the UV editor, you'll see that the clinder's unwrapped profile is now present, and in the same location as where we applied it to the texture. On a complex vehicle, you'd of course have every item of the vehicle unwrapped and arranged in a square (I like to make a 1 sided plane to use as a guide to arranging all the various unwrapped parts in a neat square).

18. Got to file and export, and save the emf file where you want. MAKE SURE you tick the three tick boxes according to your needs. Add texture outline has to be ticked always, the others obviously depend if your texture panel is going to be square, and what pixels.

19. Photoshop can't open EMF files, but windows viewer can, so double click on it, then resave it as a file you prefer (I use png). This can then be loaded into photoshop and act as a template for your texture. VISTA CANNOT OPEN EMF. You'll need to download the codec.

20. Once you're happy with your texture, the UV layout, etc, you can then remerge the faces. You can of course do this at any time, but once remerged, you can remap stuff, or rearrange the uv's as easily, so I tend to leave it till last. In the 0.000 keyframe go to Points->Merge Near and click ok. The cylinder will be whole again. Delete the 0.100 keyframe.

21. The uv editor is also a very useful tool. Whilst this will need another tutorial later, you can move uv's around by selecting the vertexes in the uveditor screen, and rotating, resizing and moving them around the bounding boxes. You can display (view-yourtexturename) the texture thats mapped to it, and move things arround accordingly. This is also a perfect way to add an already uv unwrapped object from another texture panel, onto a new panel (switch the textures using E, and then go to the uv editor to move it into a free spot on your new texture). Alos bear in mind that the uveditor will show everything thats visible in O2, so Hiding items in O2 will also hide them in the uv editor (useful for singling out items)

22. Keyframes are great. You can move, resize, split, rotate etc etc everything and the faces will remain unchanged in the original keyframe. The only things you should be aware of are delete (universal to all keyframs) and create face (universal, and has odd effects depending how you unwrapped stuff). To undo a unwrap you screwed up, go to the original keyframe, and cut and paste the object in question. It will reset in both keyframes to its original position and shape.

23. As an example, here is an UV unwrap of one of my projects to show how efficient you can be with complex models (Jackal). All the unwrapping was done in O2 and took approx a day or so (that includes all COD 4, simpsons and food breaks).

http://www.pukf.net/Messiah/unwraptute.jpg

I hope this helps, As I said, feel free to ask questions in here. I'll generally ignore PMs, as there's no point in answering questions personally if they can help everyone.

[VXR 9]

Thanks messiah, that will do instead of a video

[Col. Faulkner 0]

Thanks a lot, Messiah. I shall study this closely. My addons

take another faltering step towards completion. Yay!

[Chris Young 3]

Thanks Messiah,

Quite differrent from the method lodu taught me indeed, I'll give it a try, it seems really interesting.

[DaSquade 0]

@Messiah : OMG ! First of all i haven't looked much into the O2 UV mapping that much, i only use it for very simple and plain uv's, for stuff i'm too lazy to export-import-export to an other proper uv mapping program...

But are you serious this is the only way to unwrap a cilinder?

I know i used this methode in the very old days (OFP days). I never learned how to unwrap in other programs so i sticked to this method for all my cilinders, very time consuming method.

If this is indeed the only proper way to unwrap in O2, i would really suggest you learn a difference program as there it is very easy to unwrap. I stick to modo (not perfect, but does the job).

A cilinder for example is unwrapped in 3 clicks.

1. Select the top and button cap edges.

2. Select one edge where you want the tube to be split/opened.

3. Unwrap.

-> Result is 2 caps and an plain tube.

Also never found a quick way how to reduce already unwrapped stuff in O2 (for reduced lods). Again, programs like modo make it as easy as riding a bike. Pick the edge selection tool, select your edges you want to remove and hit the backspace key. Edges removed and uvmap stays intact, at least if you removed non-main UV parts edges.

Just my 2cent.

O2 is only a super program for low poly modelling and setting up your model. All the rest is useless imho .

[Chris Young 3]

With the latest version of o2, cylinders are automatically unwrapped when you create them. Just try to create one and go look at the UV Editor. You just need to map the flat end faces by hand but it's not that difficult.

[DaSquade 0]

Ic, but how often do you keep its original size or shape. Scaling isn't a problem, although keeping it ratio is harder (unless you use a checker map). But the moment you modifiy your cilinder, extrude or whatever, you are again stuck. But again, i haven't played much with the uv mapper of O2 (wasn't aware of the auto-unwrap).

[Synide 0]

yeah, there are some nice simple features in modo for uv editing...

a mate of mine mentioned the following program to me the other day... haven't played with it much but the vid's look interesting...

Quote[/b] ]Oh, also this software maybe of interest to modellers struggling with uv'ing... uvlayout, watch one of the demo vid's like this one for an idea... cheers X for mentioning that one.

  www.uvlayout.com

  demo vid's

[max power 21]

If you can get the model to obj format, I recommend a free program called roadkill for organic shapes. If not, and oxygen has an automatic unwrapper, usually that's good for getting all polygons represented in their proper size and shape in the UV editor, and what is left is to lay them out into a shape that is easy to paint.

[rocket 9]

yeah, there are some nice simple features in modo for uv editing...

a mate of mine mentioned the following program to me the other day... haven't played with it much but the vid's look interesting...

www.uvlayout.com

demo vid's

We use UVlayout at work all the time. I've been using it for a few months. It's quite pricey... but its EXTREMELY worthwhile.

[Messiah 2]

@Messiah : OMG   ! First of all i haven't looked much into the O2 UV mapping that much, i only use it for very simple and plain uv's, for stuff i'm too lazy to export-import-export to an other proper uv mapping program...

But are you serious this is the only way to unwrap a cilinder?

I know i used this methode in the very old days (OFP days). I never learned how to unwrap in other programs so i sticked to this method for all my cilinders, very time consuming method.

If this is indeed the only proper way to unwrap in O2, i would really suggest you learn a difference program as there it is very easy to unwrap. I stick to modo (not perfect, but does the job).

A cilinder for example is unwrapped in 3 clicks.

1. Select the top and button cap edges.

2. Select one edge where you want the tube to be split/opened.

3. Unwrap.

-> Result is 2 caps and an plain tube.

Also never found a quick way how to reduce already unwrapped stuff in O2 (for reduced lods). Again, programs like modo make it as easy as riding a bike. Pick the edge selection tool, select your edges you want to remove and hit the backspace key. Edges removed and uvmap stays intact, at least if you removed non-main UV parts edges.

Just my 2cent.

O2 is only a super program for low poly modelling and setting up your model. All the rest is useless imho   .

well, there are other ways, but for a consistent result, thats the best way forward. The 'unwrap' function works on cylinders too, but you won't always get the split in a useful location for texture breaks.

I'm sure there are plenty of better programs out there, I use 3 or so at the office, but i'm something of a purist/idiot and prefer doing everything in O2 for whatever reason.

I knocked out a tonne of work for the VBS module using that exact method, so its certainly a perfectly viable way to work, assuming you have time and patience. I certainly know that I didn't have the time, or the patience to learn a new program to unwrap with, when I could do it in O2.

[Nicholas Bell 0]

Real basic question.  How do I get the selected faces appearing in the UV editor to "stick" so I can select another set of faces?  Simply put, when I select one side of my object, it appears in the UV editor fine.  When I switch back to O2 and select another side or top of the object, when I go to the UV editor the original selection has been replaced by the second selection.

Thanks!