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Hi all.

can anyone gimme a quick and easy low-down on texturing a 3D object please? very simply, if i wanted to texture a very basic solid, say a cube do i have to work out what that shape would look like "unfolded" and then paint up the texture in that shape? what i'm wanting is to make some game pieces out of plains (or very thin boxes), so if they are (eg) 100 pixels to a side if i paint up a texture that's 200 wide by 100 high and have the front and rear images side-by-side, will it texture properly and wrap around the plain?

thanks in advance...

KW
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if you want it to look nice, then yes you will have to "unwrap" it, which means that you can lay the model out flat for easy painting. If you try and just slap a texture on an object, it will only look good from one angle, th other angles will appear stretched. I recommend googling a program called Lithunwrap, it allows you to open up models and lay them out the way you want them, the flatter you lay the model out, the better a texture can be applied because think of the texture as a light source, say you have a cube with the front of that cube pointing towards the light source, now lets say the that the front and back of the cube are transparent, and the top,botton,and sides are not, well what is going to happen, is that the front of the cube (pointing towars the light source) is going to take the full texture effect, but it is transparent like a model, so the the light will appear on the back just like the front, however the top, bottom and sides don't get little to no light, in other words they didn't get any of the texture, so in order to texture them properly, you need a program to pull those sides up or out so that they are exposed to the light/texture.

In DB I believe that textures do apply themselves across an entire plain, however if the plain is huge and the image small, you get bad resolution or stretching, so in the end it is best to texture it externally, I always find that best.

Hope that explains it.

what modelling proggie are you using? if you tell us we can help you more.

Thanks for the replies

i'm not using a modelling prog, i was just gonna use Photoshop to paint the Textures : like i said, i'm just using very basic shapes, plains or boxes so i can easily work out what the unfolded shape will look like.

thanks for the heads-up on lithunwrap, Major - i might have a need for that in the near future.

KW
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ok, it's not working.

i've created a rectangular plain, eg 50 wide by 100 high. i try to apply my texture to it, a bitmap that is of the same proportions but double the width (back image and front image side by side) so that it should wrap around the plain...but it's not. the texture is cramming itself purely on one face of the plain. i've tried using a very thin box too and the same happens - why doesn't it wrap the texture??

thanks...

KW
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load image "texture.bmp",1,1
make object plain 1,10,10
texture object 1,1

do

if rightkey() =1
xrotate object 1,.5 * timer()
endif

loop

wraps fine here.
maybe it has to do with the size of your plain an the size of your textures.

odd.... the texture is the right proportions to the plain, i'll have to try a few different sizes of it, see what happens..

what was the pixel dimensions of your texture.bmp??

KW
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