Renzatic on 27/9/2014 at 02:20
...but now, go ahead and deselect two edges linking the front and back of the cross, so they'll both be daisy chained on the UV map. You just need to do this on one side.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_101.jpg Hit CTRL+E, Mark Seams, and let's get ready to unwrap!
Go to Choose Screen Layout at the top, and select UV Editing. Read the previous tutorial on this part if you don't remember how, because I don't wanna take more screenshots. I've got 44 I've got to edit right at this point, and there's still more left to do (lazy).
With your mouse hovering over the perspective window, hit A to select the entire model, then hit U to bring up your UV menu, and select Unwrap. There you go!
(
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_102.jpg) Here
...45 pictures to edit now. :mad:
Remember when I said that Blender would sometimes positions some UVs at weird angles? It did that here, and I'll show you how to fix it here in a bit (well, you select it, hit R to rotate, then put it back into place...but you all probably want more goddamn screenshots :mad:).
So what about the cross? I'm about to show you how to stitch Uvs. It's easy as pie. Go to the UV window, hit A to deselect everything, then hit CTRL+TAB to bring up your selection menu. You've got a new element to choose from. Islands. It does exactly what you'd expect it to do. Allows you to grab each island as a unit, and drag it around super easy. G, S, and R allow you to move, rotate, and scale the islands, same as in the 3D window. If you ever need to organize your stuff, that's how you do it.
In island mode, select all the parts that make up your cross (they're the little squares, so they'll be easy to find), and move them off the grid for easy access.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_103.jpgProtip: hold down CTRL, and hold the left mouse button to do a lasso select. It'll make this next part a little easier, since all your pieces are scattered across your UV. And yes, you can do this in the 3D editor as well.
Now the magic happens. Hit CTRL+TAB, select edge mode, and select one of the outer edges on the little island with the vertical cut.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_104.jpgNow hit the V key. See that little ghost image that popped up on the main part of your cross? Those islands are connected by vertices on the actual model, and it's gonna stitch those islands back together. Hit Left Mouse, and watch it do its thing. Easy as that. You can restitch the model any way you want this way.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_105.jpgIf you select the opposite edge on that island, it'll stitch it to the opposite end of the cross.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_106.jpgSee how it works? Now let's go ahead and start stitching all our parts together. Do it so none of the islands overlap.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_107.jpgThere you go. Your unwrapped cross, all on its own island. Hit CTRL+TAB, select Island, grab it, and move it back down to the grid.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_108.jpgNow you could say the UV is finished, and call it a day, but I can tell by looking at it that it's not using the space available as efficiently as it could. Yeah, I'm cool like that. So now we're gonna get into the part that makes UV mapping so tedious: organization. We're gonna scale the entire map, since each island is cut proportionally to the others, group each piece according to relation, and move each island by hand to get it to fit as tightly as possible to maximize resolution.
This is the part I hate the most about UV mapping, and the part about modelling I enjoy the least. It's not difficult. It's just busy work.
Needless to say, once I get past rotating that one cockeyed island, I'm not gonna post step-by-step shots of this process. The end result is all you need to see how it's done.
Okay, cockeyed island. If you're not there already, hit CTRL+TAB, select island, and select it.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_109.jpgHit R to rotate, but hold down the CTRL key, so it does it by degrees. Makes it easier to align things horizontally or vertically. Rotate it until its even, but put it on its side vertically, instead of horizontally.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_110.jpgGrab the other one, and do the same thing. Hit G to move it, and plop it right beside the other one.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_111.jpgRenzatic on 27/9/2014 at 02:24
Select both, move them out of the way, then take all the big islands that make up the front and back of your gravestone, and move them towards the bottom of the grid. Remember, you can lasso with CTRL+Left Mouse, or SHIFT+Left Mouse Click to select multiple parts (yeah, I know...sake of completion and all that). Remember, you can put islands inside the empty spaces of other islands without messing anything up.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_112.jpgLittle aside, if you ever want to know what surface on your UV map corresponds to what surface on the actual model, there's a way to do that. At the bottom of your UV window, next to your element selects, there's a little button that says it “keeps UV and edit mode mesh selections in sync. When you click it, you no longer have to keep your model highlighted to see the UV maps, and you can select faces on one, and it'll show on the other. Like so:
(
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_113.jpg) Here
Handy yet again! There's only one problem with it. While you're in this mode, you can no longer select whole islands. Why they keep them separate, and why it's so conditional, I have no idea. When I mentioned that Blender sometimes does this goofy earlier on, this is an example of what I meant. But it's there if you need it.
Now, back to packing our Uvs.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_114.jpgThere we go. Much better. I've got some room to scale it up a bit, too. Or add in extra details if I plan on adding to this model later. Let's go ahead and scale it up a bit so it better fits the space provided. Select the whole map with A, hit S to scale, and scale it up so it fits the map a little more snugly.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_115.jpgAnd that's it. Your model is unwrapped and packed. Let's see how it looks with a UV grid on it.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_116.jpgPretty good. I have some slight distortion along the edges, but it won't present any problems. Especially if I paint the texture inside of Blender. The most important thing is everything is proportional, and it's packed nicely enough to give it a goodly amount of resolution.
As an added bonus, let's see what it looks like with an AO bake applied.
(
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_117.jpg) Here
Don't worry. If you're interested, I'll be getting into Ambient Occlusion baking later.
And that's it, folks. Your UVed gravestone with cross. Hope you all learned a little bit from it. If you've got any questions, feel free to ask away!
Renzatic on 27/9/2014 at 02:26
WHEW!
Renzatic on 28/9/2014 at 00:49
I'm planning on doing a lamp for my next tutorial, but there's something I need to know before I start.
...is anyone actually following along with these tuts?
R Soul on 28/9/2014 at 01:43
I'm skimming through it to get the gist of it, but I already use Blender. In post 37, rather than doing all that edge slicing, I'd subdivide two of the edges at the top. Fewer polys are made then. Remember that Thief may not have an object poly limit but BSP does. The result would be something like this:
Inline Image:
http://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac326/rsoulinternet/Blender/extrude_zps1a93c00b.jpgBut there's definitely more grave than gravy about your version.
Renzatic on 28/9/2014 at 03:16
There's a rhyme and a reason why I'm doing things the higher poly way. See, when you construct your model using poly conservative techniques, it makes it harder to edit in detail later. When you do everything with loop cuts and other tools that add far more resolution than you need, your topology stays logical, and makes it far, far easier to add in any amount of detail you want.
...and it's easy to clean up when you want to start crunching down the poly count.
For the sake of example, I went in and cleaned up the gravestone to show what I mean. The one I posted is 870 tris. This...
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Blender_Tut/Grave_Tut_Merged_Verts.jpg...380 tris. It has the same silhouette, and still smooths nicely. That's a good deal less, and it only took me about 5 minutes to tidy up.
In short, it's easier overall to throw caution to the wind, and clean it up later than it is trying to play it safe while you're building. You'll save yourself a ton of headaches and pointless struggles modelling this way.
And yeah, I'll cover merges later. Probably after I do the lamp.
LarryG on 28/9/2014 at 04:10
I skim them, but have no intention at this time of using Blender. Anim8or does fine for my needs. But it's interesting to see how you model in Blender.
Beltzer on 28/9/2014 at 08:13
I'm just skim through them just for now. But i am planning to make the same models as in these guides, in that whay maybe i'll learn something. And its good to have them on this forum, i'm sure they come to use in the future.
Dale_ on 28/9/2014 at 08:15
This is looking fantastic Renzatic! Both your creations and the tutorial. I've tried using Blender a bit in the past and I definitely liked it more than Anim8or but I'll need lots of practice to get used to it. I wish Blender and Dromed were controlled the same... hmm, maybe it's possible to completely change the keybinds in Blender?
R Soul: Actually when I was trying to import various objects I made into Thief, sometimes I'd manage to get the object through 3ds to e to bin conversion but when loading it, Dromed would shout "object has too many polys!" and pull its timeless classic "Click Yes to crash, No to crash, Cancel to crash" :D It would be so great if next NewDark allowed us to just use 3ds objects without poly limit!
