Little OTO 4

littleOTO image

Now that Little Oto's body is ready we must "dress it"?! UV TEXTURE MAPPING is the common name gived to this task. I'ts here that you will must proove that you deserve to be a "one-man-game-maker", because most of the times it's a long, precise and quite painful job.
Let's start with a cool exercise.



In Front view, Add a Cube, and extrude the top four vertices to obtain more or less a cross shape like the one in the image above. When extruding press Ctrl key to snap the vertices to the grid.



Here's the method: the lighter gray square is the "visible area of object". Every texture pixel that appears here inside a face selection lines, will appear in the object too! So we must organize the object faces selections in order to use the most available space possible. Split your 3D window, if already done set one of the windows an UV/Image Editor; click in the Current Window Type button and choose the one with a face ( red square). A grey dark window with a lighter grey square area will appear.
In the 3D window select the cross object and press F to enter Face Select mode. With the right mouse button click over the seven front faces of the object (press Ctrl key to add faces to the selection)! Now in front view, with the cursor in the 3D window press U key and choose the From window item in the pop-up menu, the selected faces will appear in the UV/Image Editor window (image above right).



Once again, the techniques I'll explain here are more or less "universal" ones. The UV Texture Editor of BLENDER is very nice, but lacks at least one important feature: Groups! We can't save groups of selected faces. To other game engines (like 3DGameStudio, Half-Life or Quake3) you can use the great Lyth Unwrapp, but it's a bit complicated for BLENDER users (file format exchanges). Anyway we'll try to achieve the same result with BLENDER.
In the Image window place the faces allready selected in a corner. Do face selections for the side and top view too. The problem with different group selections is that they'll overlap and became useless. So, each time you do a selection group move it to a corner or far away in the darker area. Once you have selected all the faces, you must rearrange them in the light gray area. It's very important that all the faces keep their relative size!!



Now open the GIMP (you don't have it? Is it possible? A FREE Photoshop-like software available even for Windows? Check the Tools section, please), and make a screenshot of the Image window. With the GIMP (or other), cut the light gray square (must be a real square area) and save it at a 512x512 size.



Now, in a different layer, using the screenshot image as a guide, start to "paint" your texture!
You don't really need to paint or drawing. If you allready have an image (ex:photo) just adapt it(cut rotate, scale, etc.) to fit the faces disposition. Or use another method: load your "ready" image and select and adapt the faces to the desired areas in the image.



When your texture work is finnished, save the image in TGA or JPG format and 256x256 pixels size, and load it in the Image window. In the 3D window, do Alt-Z and the texture will appear. Normally, the texture in one of the sides of the object it's inverted, because we've textured both sides at the same time. To solve the problem, select the wrong faces in the 3D window, and in the Image window (normally the same selection appears too) select the faces and mirror them with S and X keys.



Here's the finnished object. Notice how the green and red lines appears seamless across different faces.



Now, that you've finnished the little exercise above, you're euh...prepared to the next task: texturise Little OTO. Well, let's start. Add a shinny material to the Little OTO mesh, with the basic colour of the future texture.
Add three or four lamps (at least one spot with shadows) and place them like in the image at above. Do a render with at least a 1024 size, and save the image in TGA format. Rotate the mesh 90º in the Z axis (to keep the same lighting) and do a render again and save. Repeat the procedure for the others views of the mesh.



Now we must choose how and whos faces will "cover" the texture image.
With the two windows interface setup (red arrows), in the 3D window, select the Little OTO mesh and press F key (to have more details on how to work with the Face Select mode, please, read the Pinball Tutorial).
In front view select carefully the torso front faces that are almost planar.



With the faces still selected, press U key in the 3D window, and choose From Window in the UV Calculation menu. The faces selection will appear in the Image window. In this window select all the faces, scale down, and place them in the darker area near the corner.
To save your selection work, press Tab key to enter Edit mode, in the Edit window create a new Group and assign the selection to it ( give it a meaningfull name).



To help your selecting work, you can hide the allready selected faces.
Press H key ( with faces selected) and the selection will be hided, Image window included. That's why is important that you place each new selection in a "safety" area. If different sellections overlap they became uselles and you must restart your work.



I must warn you: BE VERY CAREFUL AND PRECISE when selecting and hiding faces.
It's a painful task, it will be very difficult to rearrange the selections, and can easily became discouraging.
You can use the trackball view to select faces, but to use the UV Calculation menu you must be in an orthogonal view to do a precise work.



When you encounter a more or less cylindrical shape you can try the "Cylinder" item from the UV Calculation menu. Select the faces of an arm and apply "Cylinder" calculation. The image at right shows you, where the "cut" zone appears. Keep this in mind when "painting" the texture.



Try the same method for the legs, or select and mirror in front, side and back views, 1, 3 and Ctrl-1 keys and use the UV Calculation menu.



When ALL the faces are hidden (selected), the organising work starts.
Select and dispose groups that share edges in the same area (ex: front torse and top arm, side top arm, back torse, shoulders). It's very IMPORTANT that, faces who share edges and vertices are alligned and have the same size ( never scale in only one axis.



Here's the final disposition (to me) of the different group faces.
Your's can be completely different, there's no problem on it. Now use the same methode we've employed in the exercise. Do a screenshot, open it in an image manipulation program, and save it in TGA or JPG or PNG format in 256x256 or 512x512 or even 1024x1024 size ( it's your decision).
Notice ( in the image above) the many little faces outside the groups! They're forgoten ones, that we must align by hand later.



Now's the big moment! Load your "fresh" texture in the Image window, do Alt-Z keys in the 3D window, and...WOW, Little OTO is just...beautiful?
I hope, for your mental health.