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Its ok, I decided to try a new form of metal texture where I just took one solid color and used a sponge filter on it, then I just blurred it with a diamond shaped shape blur, and used the dodge tool to highlight a few scratches in with my wacom tablet. It look OK, I could do better, but I'm not a pro in textures and will just stick with it till furhter notice.

Ok, I was making the texture of the model when I started to think about the colt from Dark Matter. When I went there and checked out the model and the texture I noticed a few things. First of all, let me show you the model's side view and its UV map:


First of all, let me say that the model is mosly made of solid faces, there are hardly any round ones (meaning that there are no smoothed out faces either). Now, I'm probably going to most of the faces to solid ones, but that's not the point. Check out the handle of the UV Map texture. You see how it's checkered out? Well how is it that in the model it looks normal? Is it the lighting on the model? I know that it's not because the little diamond checkered grip part of the handle isn't round, because I checked it out and it's all flat. How exactly can that texture work (and how can I duplicate it?) And honestly I think I'm going to remake the model. (I'm going to try to finish this model, but if it doesn't look good I'm going to remake the entire model so that the UV map can be much easier to make; if you look at my UV map for my model, it is a lot worse to organize than the one in this post). Edit: and also, sometimes when I apply the texture of my model to it in blender, and try to go to the textured model (like when you can choose the view as in solid, shaded, or textured) the model is sometimes completely black, or most recently completely white. I have no idea what causes this, so could someone please tell me what is causing this or how I can get rid of this? DOUBLE EDIT: I noticed some things as I tried my texturing, and certain faces were not proporsional to size. When I try addind a UV mapped texture onto the model some of the faces, being bigger proporsionally compared to the other faces compared to the ones on the UV map, is too big. In a nutshell, the face on the model is way bigger than the one on the UV map, so that one face takes the texture applied to that same face on the UV map and scales it bigger. I think I have to, again, remake the UV map . Oh well, whatever it takes to get the hang of texturing and to get this model to look good (oh, and I tried some styles for a good metal texture, I think I can handle it. I'm still waiting for a response about the handle in the DM Colt though .

I was surfing through the forum, and I found an interesting thread: http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=17907&b=3. Arras said of a way to have ragdoll physics using a certain way of exporting. Can this exporting be done ine blender (I mean the option that says export skin and bones)? Or is this exporter a completely different from the one blender uses. Or in different words, can you export the bones(in a skeletal structure you can make for an animation) and then using some coding make it so that when the character is no longer usable the exported bones control the character, giving it a ragdoll physic? Or do you have to assign the bones in the coding program, which to me sounds kind of impossible unless you can make it so that a program tells you an ID number of the vertices on an object and you say something like "assign bone to vertices 8-22,3, and 5. I don't know, the subject of this thread is not to talk about ragdolls, but the questions about modeling and animating, but if someone could bring up an answer that would be great . Also, I'm starting to notice a trend about the UV maps that blender calculates. When I make a UV map, even If I do use seams, the UV map makes the faces smaller and larger and in different overal shapes and angles than the ones on the model. How can I make it so that when I make the UV map all the faces are proportional to size? As in, can I use a function that when the UV map is made Blender keeps the shape of the faces and the same size of the faces (to the model) in comparison to the other faces. EDIT: Ok, so I realized that the DM models come in a 3ds format, and decided to import them into Blender. It worked, along with its UV map and texture. The thing that didn't export was (I guess I should say things and were instead of thing and was) the seams. It didn't show anyseams on the model, but seeing as the model was already unwrapped, I guess seams were unnecassary for export. Ok, so here's the intel: The handle, turned out to be what the 3d Model with the texture looks like: I guess when I zoomed out the model had to change the pixel size as well. Anyways, the major thing I want to know is the UV unwrapping they did to make the model. I'm still perplexed on how they unwraped the model and still got it to unwrap the way they want it, I have a theory though, but I'll have to get back to you guys on that one. I guess the only way you guys could help at this point on this specific subject is to 1.) Tell me how to unwrap an object so the faces are proportaional with the ones on the model when comparing two faces on the UV map, and 2.) asking me to upload the newest version of the model so you guys can try making seams and getting a proportional UV map. Either way is fine with me. OH, and here's something a bit interesting (for me anyways): I was waiting for someone to post something about proportional faces on the UV map, when I decided to look up some tutorials about blender UV mapping on the internet. Some of them said to use the unwrap from project view technique, and that's when it hit me: I made the gun model by tracing the side view of the real gun, if I use make a UV map of the project view from it's size, then the object could look pretty good, with a few major cons. I decided to just try it to see what it would look like, and here it is:. I personally have to say that the gun looks good, but I would rather make my own texture, for copyrighted reasons and the fact that if I'm not going to trace all the objects in my game from something in real life (some things have to be made up) and it would just look weird if I had some realisitic looking guns with some more artificial texturized objects. Just thought I would share though ^^. Oh, and just as a final word for today, I'm going to say something: When I imported the DM colt into blender, the slider and gun were two different objects (in the same project) except they share the the UV map. How do they do this? Do they make two seperate UV maps for the objects and then in blender, and then leave spots for both objects, and in the texture the texture is for both objects. This way in the final export the you only have to assign one texture in the end, so that you can have multiple objects in one mesh. Is it better to UV map the multi object way or the single object way where you have many meshes in one object? I can see the UV map being easier to make this way. (for you could just use the L command to pick the the mesh of the slider, hen just move it up and make the seams, and then move it back, and then just do this for all the meshes in the object, and then unwrap the model and make a good UV map).

Ok, I know it's been a long time since I last posted here, but something strange occured that I do not understand. Take a look at this picture: . For some reason, when I unwrapped those faces, they became triangles. First of all, what happened, and how do I fix it? More seams?

More seams is probably your answer

as far as I know, a quad face will never unwrap as triangles. You can triangulate the faces, unwrap it and return the faces to quads and the UV will remain triangulated until you refresh your selection, but it actually looks like grey background in some of those... make sure none of the faces in the map are folded over on themselves - basically that they are not actually quads but where two vertices are occupying the same point

otherwise *shrug* if you want to post the .blend I can mabye see what's going on

Oh, you're right Ortu. On every quad face of the inner trigger section of the gun, one vertex of each quad was over another of the same quad, making them look like triangles. Thanks for the help, this will come in handy in the future, but just for the record I took the time to make the rest of the gun, watched a few vids of the gun being made in blender(which are accurate by showing the shooting process and each part [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6SmlOEzNBs&feature=related]), and remodeled the parts of the guns to make it exactly as I could make the best of it. I'm going to remake the Uv map later, and before I end this post, congrats on winning the 3D modeling contest Ortu! (PS, I remember in the old thread we mentioned that a knife model like the one I made should have about 700 polies, but how about this complex gun? The one in Dark Matter pack 1 had around 500 triangular faces, and it had all the basics except a magazine, reloding spot, and the spot where the an empty bullet cartdrige comes out during the recoil, those were textured on, though I only think they would take an extra 100 faces to make this. So, if I'm right, I'm about 900 faces over the limit, because my model has 1500 triangular faces )

Well I was on the verge of remodeling the gun for the last time to make it lower polied, then I remembered something: Action 3D reducer. I got the demo and tested it out. Remember that knife in the old thread that went waaaayyy yabove poly? Well here it is in Action 3D Reducer in solid and wireframe mode:
And here it is again when I reduced the polies. The quality, I'm guessing, should be about the same when I apply the texture. (And yes, AC3D works on textures to, there is a sample model that had a texture, and when I reduced it from a 3000 model to 400, it retained the texture and pretty much the same quality, I just don't know how to import the texture into A3DR . Oh well):
Its pretty useful and I'm concidering getting it. The only thing is when I export the current gun model I am working on and import it into A3DR, the model doesn't show up. The knife and sword models do, but for some reason not the gun... NOTE: If you can't read the triangle count at the top, then the original model was 3590 triangular faces, and the reduced model is 1004 triangular polies. The funny thing is is that the A3DR kept the serration on the knife, yet reduced the poly amount by about 2500 faces. EDIT: I realized a few hours ago that sicne all the faces are supposed to be triangles, I made my guns faces triangles, and it imported fine. I think A3DR is a helpful program, but now I'm not sure If I should get it. It would be more helpful if it could somehow take the current shape of the model and then completely remake the mesh except without any extra unneeded polies. Actually, I'll just ask for you guys's opinions: Should I get A3DR? It seems useful to an extent...

Thanks!

on the knife, most of that came off in the hilt. Really only need 6 or 8 sides on a cylinder to look rounded.

Yeah, when I modeled the knife I was kind of a rookie for blender. I didn't realize that a simple texture could take the look away from a low poly model. . And you're welcome about the congratulations. Anyways, I realized as much when I looked at the end of the handle, that little curvy part was missing. I'm still a bit paranoid about the amount of faces a cylinder needs to make a circle look round... When I made the handle of the knife, I accidently used the default 32 verticie circle. Now I use 15, unless I can find the a situation where an object is small enough so that a lower amount of vertices can work, but when it comes to something close up to the players watchers face, or something big like a sewer pipe, then I tend to use a higher amount of verticies. Thanks for the suggestion though, I'll go into the gun model and replace the barrel ASAP .

smoothed normals goes a long way on a cylinder, but yeah the closer it is to the viewer the more detail you will need. Particularly if the end of the cylinder is in view, the angles where the sides meet become more pronounced.