@thomthom said:

Had a quick look at your model. When I made the quad into quads that QuadFace Tools can work with I could remove the triangulation while preserving the UV mapping.

[flash=420,315:bqoasve2]http://www.youtube.com/v/2YgmI5E_bPc?version=3&hl=en_GB[/flash:bqoasve2]

The automatic conversion only worked on the top part. For the lower part it didn't find the quads correctly. But the converter is a WIP atm. But if you do have Quads, then they can be de-triangulated.

good stuff, works. Has some small problems with deleting the wrong triangle sometimes but that can be worked with, overall a much better time saver. I hope its not rude of me to ask but you seem to know your tools very well.. "stupid statement I know lol" but is there any way I can use your tools to preserve the textures on the surface the way they are and delete all the quads and triangles inside? This is the main reason why I'm using sketchup because no other feature that I know of in any other 3d program can come remotely close to what your tool has done for me so far with this project. Just trying to get the job done

@thomthom said:

@blah11 said:

Just one last question, is there a way to convert triangulated mesh to quads?

I got a version in QuadFace Tools. Mind you, it's a beta version, and the tris to quads method if the least mature function in the toolkit. It does work well some times, while other times it doesn't process things right.

But give it a try. And please do share some models that shows problems as I need more real world testcases to analyse. (I'd be happy to get working models as well - for comparison.)

unfortunately the remove tris option in your tools did not work for me at all sorry.
I'm glad I gotten attention do mind if I make a suggestion? Like TIG said, his method that basically bakes the texture and turns the entire face into one giant texture, it works surprisingly well. I don't know if that was an intended feature but id defiantly look into it for the future it could be a great tool for people who imported already uv mapped objects, and to possibly recreate them. I think what messes it up is that some faces are tris and others are ngons and I know your tool doesn't support that but who knows, in the future =p...

Let me show you what im trying to do with your tool. Here is an image of the 3d model roof I am working with

and as you can see there is in fact some tris and ngons but those cannot be messed with otherwise the UV will be incorrect, I had manually deleted the tris making as many quads as possible.
When I make one quad "make unique texture" then select the entire roof and "combine textures" and erase lines inside, it indeed does do what I wanted with an unexpected twist, as you can see in the materials window it made the entire roof its own texture and UV which is quite possibly one of the most useful feature I now have the pleasure to use, though I lost detail in the texture as a whole "got blurrier" AND most spaces where they had connected they made white lines and displaced a little.

ALTHOUGH when I only do quads it works perfectly. as seen in the black bounding square

Overall I think you're a prophet of skethcup and you really made the tool I was hoping for ever since sketchup came out making my texturing MUCH simpler though the thing is it doesn't work perfectly. I would like to watch this tool in hopes that it matures, being able to just take a flat plane that is tessellated like this and delete the unneeded lines while preserving the texture the way it looks without loss in detail would be an awesome addition to your tools. Personally id use it every day.

Just one last question, is there a way to convert triangulated mesh to quads?
I could just manually do it all but im going to be working with literally THOUSANDS of models in the next couple of weeks and this could save me a bunch of time. Thanks in advance.

OH by the way TIG your method is very good but I have come to the conclusion that it wont work 100% for my needs. When I try to do allot of quads together the texture gets messed up also some edges are ngons so ultimately its not going to work out well in the end. I am VERY interested in hearing about that Deep exploration method, I checked on google with no avail. I am convinced its possible but I just cant seem to figure it out. Thanks for you help thus far!!!

your method worked PERFECTLY thank you this will make my future projects much nicer!

@solo said:

Got a simple model to test with?

http://www.2shared.com/file/gUkUFzLx/Map_Prop1.html
Here ya go =p

@solo said:

I'd suggest using Deep exploration.

TIGs way sound very interesting because I actually wanna work with this in sketchup BUT I hadn't known deep exploration can do this. I google searched but came up with nothing, care to elaborate? It will be much appreciated.

ok maybe the description is a little misleading but its the best way I can explain it basically, we imported 3d models from a dead game that we want to recreate but a major problem is that, that game had objects that had thousands of unnecessary polys. So I want to delete them while preserving the way the texture is on the surface. Here is an example
this is an unedited object, as you can see there is many triangles, the texture is properly uv mapped according to the textures.

When I delete some triangles it continues its texture as if the surface wasn't UVmapped

What I want to do is be able to delete the unnecessary triangles making the faces into quads and ngons while preserved the way the texture looks on the surface. when thinking about this I immediately thought of some type of "baking" method but honestly that sound too easy. Does anyone know or have any ideas how I can get this done?

@chris fullmer said:

Cool Phillip! Looks like you're having learning the rendering stuff. The fuzzy FOV is making it a bit difficult to really judge the quality of the material on it, but it looks like its probably pretty nice.

What renderer are you using?

im using Keyshot. Pretty great renderer for someone who doesn't know much about mental ray. Simple too.

Still have lots of work to do with it. I'm very pleased the way the texture came out, I been trying to go for that crunched metal look that is also brushed and I believe I got it spot on "at least from what I was thinking of" this is gonna be a fun project.
I haven't decided what material I am going to use for the stand, I was originally going to make it a shiny metal but it didn't look right so I dumped it.

BTW I know the render is a little blurry, I been playing around with FOV and I guess I messed up somewhere.

OH BTW I know someone is going to mention this so I might as well before I get called out, I did notice the texture got mirrored on the bottom, I'm gonna fix it later I wanna finish the modeling work first.

Finally finished =D
I am happy with the way it turned out, I was going to add some things to it but decided not to.
Here is a pic of the 100% finished product now haha, I know its not that much diffrent from the last, it just has its problems fixed.

My next project which is an exotic chair I'm working on, based off my own design again of course =p
Here is a preview of it how it is now. Decided to use Subdivide and Smooth for this project.

how did you make such fantastic wood texture? I am going to be making a bunch of furniture in sketchup in the next few weeks and anything I can do to improve my style is greatly appreciated. I'm lovin the design of the windows, grade A work.

@dave r said:

Well, when you get to doing them, don't make those stinkin' little square texture images. Those squares might work fine for carpet or diamond plate aluminum but for wood they are worthless. Make textures that scale out to be reasonable board dimensions. You know, 8 to 12 feet long and somewhere in the 6 to 8 inch wide range. Something like this.

This is cherry about 9 feet long and whatever the width turns out to be. I posted it as a smaller image than the one I use in SketchUp because it is so long.

will do good tip thanks

EDIT
OK I'm fairly done with it now I'm going to post it in the forums when I fix the uv map on the wavy sides and small handles. I didn't expect them to have an error but its good to have seen it now then never eh =P

here is an image of basically the finished product

Thanks for you help it turned out much better then I thought it would

@dave r said:

Don't take it the wrong way but the materials don't look that much like wood to me. Perhaps before you do a tutorial, you might want to see if you can get a bit more of a woodgrain look to it. To me it looks like a two color paint job with the top color rubbed so the lower color shows through.

nah its all rite I know haha I am not such a great texturer I might do new textures later on but for now its ok. I am doing some research online how to make a better wood grain texture. I believe I have gotten it right so far but needs some small work to make it really look good. at the moment im just trying to get the texture coordinates in sketchup right.

@dave r said:

Good. Now are you going to build it for real?

How did you make the textures?

I used paint.net to make the wood texture. I'm thinking about making a tutorial on how to do it its fairly simple. The same technique can be used to make brushed metal given you take the last step out lol.

I don't know about building it for real but I have been itching for another wood project ever since I left high school. I have made really great furniture in high school and I really miss the hobby. ill defiantly keep this in mind for the future =p

all rite I am on a roll today =D
Finished the texture maps and replaced the textures I changed the wood pattern and color, sorry forgot what kind of wood had this grain LOL. Anyway all textures were made by me and as far as the model goes, its complete other then the fact that im going to add some small things to it later.

OK went back to the drawing board and made a handle I am much happier with. I am going to make it brushed stainless steel instead of the gold on wood. I believe this color combination will go well with the desk when im done with it. Also I edited the material so I can set the uv coords for wood grain that goes in different directions on the woods surface.
Heres some pics of the new handles

@dave r said:

Not a bad start. the bottom drawer pulls ought to match the rest. And I agree that three on the center drawer is too many. The grain on the top should run the long way and the grain on the drawer fronts should be horizontal. Especially on the center drawer. As it is shown, that drawer front wouldn't remain flat for very long.

The cherry on the drawer fronts and panels looks a bit too yellow, at least on my monitor. I'd give it a bit more of a reddish cast.

Keep plugging away.

yeah I guess that would be allot better haha. Anyway I did plan on changing the handles, they looked allot better on paper but when I brought them to the 3d environment they seem to not match the rest of the model.

Took me about 2 hours to make besides the texures which turned out to be a pain in the arse lol.
Anyway im not the best texturer in the world I would assume that I'm not very good but at least I tried.
I'm still considering this WIP because I'm not 100% happy with the colors. I'm always the worst when deciding so id like to see what people think about it.

The whole desk is made from Cherry Wood.

sigh I guess ill just skip sketchup then. I was really looking forward to using this program with these models.

@tig said:

Most of the mapping is fine, a few areas need a tweak...
Your comment still doesn't explain why it's 'critical' to you that a gray area a few mm across inside a robot's elbow joint has to be textured so exactly - for all the viewer knows it's meant to look like that anyway - only you know that it isn't!
When viewed in most scenarios these areas won't even subtend a pixel on the screen - it's not like they are magenta and will stand out or flicker ??

we plan on using the models for a game, people will notice the areas. And its not like that small area matters for this robot but I have a couple hundred more with the same problem when I export to sketchup. Some is more obvious then others.