I'm writing here few tips about how making a good texture for your models, hope it's the right place for such a 3D.
OK, let's start from the beginning.
UV maps and unwrapping methods
For best results on your texture you want a very good set of UVs. I know it's a boring and long work, but if the UV set is not complitely done or done in the wrong way it will reflect on your texture layout, giving you sucky results.
To avoid texture stretches, mirror texture reflections, or worse blur effect when you need a clear and sharp map, you must give the model a good Uv set.
It's useful to make and save few primitive objects ( cylinder, cube, cone..) and unwrap them correctly, so you can recall them in times of need and just put them inside your model saving the time of a new unwrap.
Tools for a good unwrap are many and various, personally I use a combination of Maya 7's UV Editor and O2 UV Editor.
Maya gives me a good auto-map tool, while O2 offers me the possibility to unwrap manually every single face when I need the complete control on my texture. An example could be the lens of a scope, or the seeking head of a missile, things that have a special place in my UVs sets because they have to be clear. Other friendly programs may be Lithunwrap, Ultimate Unwrap 3D Pro et similia. Choose the one you like best, become its best friend and you'll see a big improvement in your models.
Always try to plan very well your sets, thinking about the space you have, according to texture dimensions, shape of Uvs map ( a rectangular 1024x2048 offers you a longer side if you need for example to map a missile avoiding to repeat texture pattern in more than 1 face, this is used if you need to map a realistic texture very close to reality), and first of all the list of priorities: what you want to be cristal clear in your texture needs a bigger portion of space in UVs map. Also, try to keep the set in a good shape, you may need to change something and you do not want to click on the wrong UV and stretch everything because it's too close to another one .
A good way to do this it's modeling a polygon and immediately build its own UVs map.
Once again, already unwrapped primitives help you a lot.
So once you decided the dimensions of your texture just open Photoshop and create a new file with 72 DPI ( dot per inch, use 72 because videos just display that much, creating a bigger file is useless, definition is given by whole texture dimensions, so a 1024x1024 will give you a sharper texture than a 512x512, right?). Paint the background black or white, I use black because gives me better contrast when searching for errors. Give it the proper name ( using the "_co" suffix results useful and tells you what map you are talking about) and save it as a .TGA obviously uncompressed.
Open your Text View 2 and save the .TGA into the .Pac file.
All these files, obviously on Drive P, right?
Go back to O2 and assign the texture to the model ( select the whole model, press "E" key then select manually texture from folders and click Apply then OK )
Give it a try, searching for errors ( Main menu - Structure - Check Faces : will display unwrapped faces or errors in your mapping ).
Give it a second try, searching for errors ( make sure your SECTIONs have the same texture, when you copy/past something a new section is created, less sections the better).
Done?
Cool let's dress our model.
Texture Building
Here we go folk, start taking a pic of your brand new and fabulous UVset with the Stamp key, then copy it right in your texture Photoshop file, layer 1.
This is useful to have an idea of where exactly a mapped object is in your set, ans you can also put a trasparency over and paint directly on the UV set.
For this tutorial I'll use the model I built for Wld427's SAM launcher, a 512x512 texture. Here you are the uv map set.
You may notice I used a complete unwrap of the cylinders to have a better result on the model, at the cost of space in my UV map, of course.
But because the model is really light and simple I decided to do so.
If you want to save space you can map an half of the cylinder's faces and make a mirror image of the others.
Go back to the UV editor, select half the faces, use the Break command from the Edit menu and then again from same menu apply a Mirror ( vertical or orizontal ). Put back the UV and make sure they perfectly match the other half, et voila' the trick is done. You may also choose to map 1/4 of the cylinder to save more space. Example, the metallic burnished barrel of a cannon, no need to plain map every face, just use mirrors and it will be fine
Back to UV map, please notice the big circles on the right, engine and seeking head respectively, they are so big because I do not want them to blur when in game I walk close to the model ( example would be a saboteur putting C4 on the SAM launcher, you would have a pretty definition on the missile even looking close. On mine you can spot the reflection of the target on the seeking edge, a small eye candy I added for fun..) The bigger is the UV, the better and less blurred texture will appear in game.
Here you are the color map:
Ok let's start building it up, from zero.
Let's start from the main base color, a grey.
What's the best way to simulate a real weapon's color in a game? Taking a good picture from the Net ( plastic scale modelers' walkarounds are your best friends ; ) import them in Photoshop and use the color picker to choose the right tone.
Sometimes a Autocolor or Autolevel command is useful, expecially if the picture was taken under the sun or with a grey sky colors may change a bit.
Cool, you now have a sucky plain grey color that will make your model look like a Southpark cartoon and not a real thing.
The Net helps you again. Search a good image of a plain metal surface with scratches and rust and whatever you need, import in photoshop and from the layer panel select the fusion method to Screen or Muliply. Then apply a control of trasparency untill you are satisfied with the results.
The new layer will add to your plain grey all the real surface details you need, and it will still remain grey.
If you are not satisfied with the results, try a different blending method, like Soft light and so on.
I use this way to have a realistic metal texture.
Add some shadows-hilights with the Photoshop Burn/Dodge commands, not a lot if you plan to add a specular mapping later. Scratches on the surface are done in the same way, just find a scratched pattern and blend it with various methods/trasparency untill surface appears real and used.
How did I make bolts and rivets?
Simply building a circle of the same metal and adding a Bevel/Emboss filter from the menu. Control the parameters to make it look like flat and not a bubble.
Again control trasparency and if needed blend them down with Overlay method. Play around with blending methods and you'll have great results.
Paneling?
Ok easy task. Create a pattern with a simple (black, 1 pixel wide, no blur) brush, then apply a Gaussian Blur and control its trasparency. With a soft brush set to 20% gently remove the centre of every line, leaving the cross higlighted.
This because borders in reality catches more dirt than middle portions on a panel. Once you like your paneling add some variety to those panels. With a soft brush apply a lighter tone of the base color in the central part of every panel, being worried to add some differences from panel to panel.
Control blur and trasparency again and again.
Writings on the missile are actually real ones taken from pictures around the Net and scaled down. To match the color of my model I play with same commands I wrote above untill I'm satisfied with the layout. Markings an warning lines are simply painted down with a brush and then blurred.
You see using Blur and Trasparency often are the best solution to make a model look not chaotic.
For the engine I used a circular selection and Bevel/Emboss command many times in different layers, to create the illusion of depht. Shadows are painted manually to avoid lighting change in the whole texture. Every time you apply an automatic shadow it must have the same direction, or all the layers using such a filter may change, so better use a black brush on a layer below. Seeking head is actually a real Maverick sensor scaled down
Ok, I'm done fot today, hope all this was interesting/useful, I'm going to cover more deeply other arguments sooner or later, for questions feel free to PM me
Here's the model, good job everybody
Cheers, GH
