General Question Galaxy Development

[The Shadow]

How do i make textures? specifically for use with anim8tor. i made a mesh and tried to use it with orbiter using the texures that anim8tor had but i did not see anything once orbiter loaded(i was using vinka's sc3) i'm pretty sure that the ship was there it just did not show, so i'm guessing that the textures anim8tor is using is not the same.

any help would be great. thanks

 

[liber]

Check this ar81 tutorial...[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2730"]Anim8or tutorial: How to model a rocket (Lesson 2)[/ame]

 

[The Shadow]

do you know where the UV mapper is located? he did not provide a link.

and is this how i would make transparent or semi-transparent textures as well?

thanks for your help

 

[liber]

do you know where the UV mapper is located? he did not provide a link.

and is this how i would make transparent or semi-transparent textures as well?

thanks for your help

Why you don't go on:

http://www.anim8or.com/

and

http://members.lycos.nl/jonim8or/tutorials.html

I beleve you get your answer there.

 

[MJR]

Just type in UV mapper classic. It should have a link.

 

[The Shadow]

i could not open any of the tutorials, sorry

but i have gotten the latest version of UV mapper classic and i will follow the tutorial by ar81

thank you for pointing me the right direction

but i am still confused about transparent textures.

---------- Post added at 05:14 PM ---------- Previous post was Yesterday at 09:23 PM ----------

if i have two groups in my mesh and i want them to have the same texture do i need to export both seperately to UV mapper? eg. i have the landing gear doors and main body, but i want the gear doors to be a part of the same texture. or would it just be much simpler to export them separately and make different textures for both?

 

[ar81]

Before working with meshes, you need to understand its structure.
The manual of [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2740"]Mesh Wizard 1.9d[/ame] explains meshes.
Since editing meshes manually is too boring, Mesh Wizard was created for some common mesh tweaking tasks.

Texturing is basically painting on a pixel canvas. How good your texture is depends on your artistic skills and the available tools that software has to offer.

The next problem is to wrap the mesh with that texture, which is basically like attaching a rubber texture sheet to a mesh frame with vertices. I have been trying to find a good way to texture meshes in an easy and intuitive way. UV mapper is not as nice as some payware modelers. No success yet.

Once you wrapped texture around your mesh in your favorite modelling program, you must export mesh to MSH format, and texture must be exported to DDS.

The remaining task is to put textures and meshes in the proper Orbiter directory.

 

[The Shadow]

right now i'm just practicing with the textures provided by AR81 in his tutorial and i followed his instructions as well as i could, but unfortunately when i loaded it in orbiter the mesh showed up but with the textures messed up

somehow the textures are invisible on the side nearest the camera so that i can see through it till i reach the other side so that i see whats on the back and not the front like a one way mirror pointed towards the inside of the craft

i searched but did not find anything similer to this problem. do you have any idea what caused this?

 

[MJR]

Did you use UV mapper? What is the shape of your craft?

 

[Tommy]

somehow the textures are invisible on the side nearest the camera so that i can see through it till i reach the other side so that i see whats on the back and not the front like a one way mirror pointed towards the inside of the craft

Sounds like your normals are reversed. The normal indicates the "face" of a poly, and single sided poly's are only visible on one side. In essence, your mesh is "inside-out".

Perhaps Anim8tor or MeshWizard has a tool to reverse the normals for you, I haven't use either.

 

[The Shadow]

i'll look to see if i can find that Tommy

and the mesh is shaped similer to a rocket, a slightly deformed cylinder and yes i used the uv mapper

 

[MJR]

What did the UV mapper look like after you did that? I found that a mesh slightly messed up can ruin it when you are trying to texture it.

 

[The Shadow]

mostly it was vertical lines with triangles on top, but i only used the uv mapper on part of the mesh, the engine booster type things similer to the SRBs. the rest i just used a flat texture, just plain white. even that showed up inside-out

i looked real quick and found a "flip normals" button in anim8tor and used it, exported it to orbiter msh standard and plugged it in and it still shows up inside out, i'll try it with mesh wizard tomorrow if i can open it

 

[MJR]

I'll be glad to look at the files tommorrow if you send them to me.

 

[The Shadow]

what files do you want?

and how would i send them to you? i really don't know that much about this forum

 

[MJR]

The textures and the An8. file. All you do is put them as a zip file and post them here.

 

[The Shadow]

here it is.

i've been working in .3ds not .an8 but i think it should still work, and the textures are bmps so you can work with them in anim8or. if you need anything else let me know


my idea behind this was a large inter-planetary space colonization shuttle, just dock a bunch of landing craft(XR5's) in the internal docking bay and enjoy your trip. not designed to reenter, but the entire hab section(nosecone) is the escape module just in case.

 

[MJR]

Did you use DXTex and change it to a DXT-1 or DXT-5?

 

[MJR]

Use the textures I uploaded and see if they work for you.

 

[The Shadow]

i did dxt-1 as instructed in the ar81 tutorial

and i'll give them a try real quick