Spring RTS Engine

Im new to modelling and after reading several tutorials on UV mapping, decided that we were better off not seeing eachother, so i've decided to use 3DO builder instead, . Along time ago i remember trying it out and seeing lots of various arm/core textures on the right hand side, but recently i opened it and load/put together some models and could seem to see any textures.....

So long story short, where would i find the origional cavedog textures or various other ones people have made (i've tried searching file universe...) or maybe you could point me to a tutorial on texture creation of 3DO builder if none are available,

thanks

Lots of tutorials make such a big deal out of UV Mapping and make it sound really complicated when its not.

Go try wings3d. If you go with 3do builder and learn that form of texturing then your running down a dead end, and at some point soon your going to have to run all the way back and start again with UV Mapping and its going to be even harder ebcause you're so used to ancient texturing methods.

There're some easy UV Mapping tutorials on this messageboard I suggest you look at them.

You should try out UltimateUnwrap3D which has a free trial and is pretty cheap to buy, or LithiumUnwrap which is its free predecessor.

Great tutorial for them here: http://tutorials.moddb.com/208/uv-mappi ... tutorials/

using wings to uvmap is dead easy.



3do



Same model uv wrapped and in s3o.

bearing in mind that im not uber-experienced, and i pretty much figured it out myself, and now 3 weeks later, my mod is in its alpha stages :)

to answer your question (assuming you have TA and TA:CC) you simply have to put totala1.hpi and ccdata.ccx in C:/cavedog/totala and 3doBuilder will load them up :)

If you keep the models relatively simple UV mapping shouldn't really be that hard. Learning to UV and texture efficiently is hugely a matter of practice and experience, but that's not because the basics are very difficult, it's because there are alot of advanced tricks and techniques that take some actual time doing more basic stuff to learn how/why they work.

SwiftSpear wrote:If you keep the models relatively simple UV mapping shouldn't really be that hard. Learning to UV and texture efficiently is hugely a matter of practice and experience, but that's not because the basics are very difficult, it's because there are alot of advanced tricks and techniques that take some actual time doing more basic stuff to learn how/why they work.

couldnt agree with you more. my first s3o model took me 4 or 5 hours to map and tex a 80 poly tank **edit*and its covered in seams and looks pretty nasty tbh*. those 2 helicopters took me 3 hours for both (modeling time not included, i already had the model, and theres only minor differences between them, but the maps are quite different)

Doing good and efficient UV maps however isn't just a one click done thing. Something all of you should pick up right in the beginning is proper mirroring/sharing.

Similar objects don't have to be UV mapped/textured twice, you just do it once and then clone+flip the other one. Or cut large symmetrical objects in half and mirror them back together which effeciently halves the UV map space needed (but adds some polygons).

Sure, you can just map the model by using projection in wings, for example, but you're gonna end up with lots of ugly seams (where the UV map isn't connected) and maps which could share the same texture.

Honestly, it's one of the more important things about modeling and should not be rushed/skipped, IMO.

rattle wrote:Similar objects don't have to be UV mapped/textured twice, you just do it once and then clone+flip the other one. Or cut large symmetrical objects in half and mirror them back together which effeciently halves the UV map space needed (but adds some polygons).

Don't overdo it, it usually is better if you don't mirror stuff that's too close to the mirror plane so it's not as obvious. Of course I'm usually too lazy to do it but it does give better results.