Texture mapping?

ntxdave

however i achieved this by making some basic cuts to your mesh to get some rough quad mesh to start with, then refined the subdivision using quadface tools (triangulating also helps to make the texturing work better) and grouped some regions, again quadface loops helped a lot in selecting the faces. finally textured each group with more convenient method in thru paint.. natural mapping for the main straight parts and quad mapping for the curved slices.. just played a bit to orizontally scale them convincingly so the texture don't stretch too much.. this is pretty basic you can achieve better results than this spending more time in it, but maybe if it's intended for mid/long distance use and you don't need close-up views i think it'ok.. hope this can help!

OK - would you mind trying this in English so people like me can understand/learn? As examples:

@panixia said:

i achieved this by making some basic cuts to your mesh to get some rough quad mesh to start with
Since I do not work with meshes, what is a quad mesh?

@panixia said:

then refined the subdivision using quadface tools (triangulating also helps to make the texturing work better)
What is a quadface tool?

@panixia said:

and grouped some regions, again quadface loops helped a lot in selecting the faces.
Is this normal grouping and again what is a quadface tool?

@panixia said:

quad mapping for the curved slices
What do you mean by quad mapping?

As I said, I do not normally work with a mesh and some of this is total Greek to me and I would like to learn.

panixia

@pbacot said:

What I could not do (even starting from scratch) is make a roof like that receive quadmesh mapping correctly altogether.

this is not possible as far as i can tell.. i think even if you subdivide the straight part more, somehow the influence of the sloped last ring would distort the mapping..

@pbacot said:

I had to use ThruPaint "natural" mode on the sides and quadmesh on the center to get anything like panixia shows. The steep conical section needs to to not only be quad-ready (No more than 4 sides) but be divided horizontally--even though there were no horizontal roof breaks.

infact this is exactly what i did.. a mix of natural mapping and quad mapping.. maybe my terrible enghlis did't help to understand properly..

pmolson

ntxdave, I am in much the same boat in not knowing much of the lingo as well as not having learned the plug ins.

I hesitated to even ask this mapping question for years because I figured it would open a large can of learning on my part.

I don't think it is really fair of us to ask these guys to explain all the methods and define all the terminology for us. kind of like asking an auto mechanic how do i fix my car myself and then saying..whats an engine?

I plan to listen to their conversation, investigate what they are saying, try myself, and then ask specific questions.

That is not to say that if a step by step tutorial resulted from this conversation that I would not use it.

panixia

@ntxdave said:

OK - would you mind trying this in English so people like me can understand/learn?

I apologize for my poor english, but maybe english is your native language, not mine, so it's hard for me explain in english.. moreover i'm not paied to teach you.. so you can be more polite.. just ideas..

@ntxdave said:

@panixia said:

i achieved this by making some basic cuts to your mesh to get some rough quad mesh to start with
Since I do not work with meshes, what is a quad mesh?

a quad mesh is a mesh composed only by quad sided poligons not triangles or n-gons.

@ntxdave said:

@panixia said:

then refined the subdivision using quadface tools (triangulating also helps to make the texturing work better)
What is a quadface tool?

@panixia said:

and grouped some regions, again quadface loops helped a lot in selecting the faces.
Is this normal grouping and again what is a quadface tool?

quadface tools is a brilliant thomthom's plugin wich is really useful because let you take advantage of non-planar quads (native sketchup doesn't support conventional quad-modeling tools wich are commonly found in other 3dmodelers like 3dsmax, c4d, blender, and so on)

@ntxdave said:

@panixia said:

quad mapping for the curved slices
What do you mean by quad mapping?

As I said, I do not normally work with a mesh and some of this is total Greek to me and I would like to learn.

quad mapping is one of the metods found in thru pauint and other tools to apply a texture .. basically the idea is that the texture is distorted and bended to follow the flow of the quad loops..

both quadfacetools and thrupaint come with a lot of documentation and examples and you can read furthermore on google.. moreover the basic principles of decent quad modelings are the very same for any software wich supports quads, so you can easily find intersting tutorials done with blender or 3dsmax etc.. the basic principles are all there..

pbacot

Thanks Panixia!

I think people say "in english" to mock their own inability with technical terms, compared to the teacher, not meaning to be impolite.

ntxdave

@pbacot said:

Thanks Panixia!

I think people say "in english" to mock their own inability with technical terms, compared to the teacher, not meaning to be impolite.

100% Correct I was not criticizing your "English". He is correct, I just did not understand the technical aspects of what you were saying. While not 100% correct, your grammar was not the problem.......... I just did not understand technically what you were saying. Still not 100% sure but your explanation is moving me in the right direction.

I have been using SketchUp for a little over a year now but this type of stuff has not been needed for what I do. I have not used any other 3d modeling tools nor do I have an engineering background. I usually ask questions on this forum just to try to learn and understand the tools/environment. I will go off and do some more studying............

panixia

no problem at all.. just to better introduce you to the quad based approach, keep in mind that the basic concept is to build every mesh out of quad (actually they can just be two triangles with the shared edge marked as a "diagonal" for non-planar quads), thus those quads form (at least in simple quad based mesh like this) a sort of grid whit "row and columns" so it's easier to "navigate" the mesh you may easiliy select loops of edges or quadfaces and grow/shrink selections, also you can control the density of quad and all of this can be used to predict how a texture will be distorted if mapped with "quad" criterium. also a quad based approachh is more suitable for subdivision modeling and rendering with displacement.. when the loops of quads inersect themselves and flow one innto anoter or forms corners you have what it's called a "pole" and usually those poles are used to controll the pinch and the flow of organic meshes.. but that's another whole different level..