Awkward mapping

[Tommy L]

I need to map a regular texture (Glass tiles 200x400mm) over a curved building. If you think of an extruded wobbly shape, like a chamfered parallelogram for example, the camera needs to be able to fly right round the building so cheating in photoshop wont work. Its the vertical lines that give it away. Ive only done boxy buildings before and this bendy one is a mapping nightmare! It seems like a really easy question but its been driving me nuts.

Please help,

cheers, Tom.

[TiW]

Tommy,

 

It would really help to see the shape that you are talking about. If you could post a picture that would be brill. I am finding it hard to visualize what you mean.

 

If it is all curved around you could use a cylindrical mapping and hope you get away with it. If you are using 3DS Max You could also use the UVW unwrap if the shape is really irregular. You could also assign different mapping presets to different faces. So for the curved surfaces you could assign a cylinder map and distort it and for the flat faces assign a planar map.

[Tommy L]

I forgot to mention, im working in studio viz.

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/forum/filepush.asp?file=Bendy.jpg

 

Thats the link to the image. The plan view is on the left and on the right is the front view. ive only really tried box mapping it and cheating on the stills, but that wont wash in an animation.

Cheers for the above tips mate, ill try those today.

[TiW]

Unfortunately I have never used Viz I am a Max user but I think they are both quite similar so hopefully there shouldn’t be too many discrepancies. If you want the mapping to be perfectly regular the only way I know is to UVW unwrap the mesh and do it like that. If you head over to www.3dbuzz.com there is a training VTM on how to unwrap a gun for Unreal Tournament 2003. The principles should be the same for your building.

 

If you are just after an approximation however you could always use a cylinder or box map and then move and scale them to try and fit your object the best you can. Depending on the arrangement of your faces you could also use a face map. As you said in your post it is awkward.

 

Hope this helps.

[Tommy L]

Cheers, the initial advice proved enough to get it done. I'll post the image when its finished with a 'whoop' and a 'hell yeah' and a 'big up TiW' in the credits.

Tom.