Texturing ship's hull with planking effect - best method?

[Mr Mouse]

I wish to create a stylized wooden hull for a boat and was wondering what would give me the best way of texturing the hull using a wooden planking effect?

Would uv's be the best bet ? Would planar projections be ok - or would they distort too much?

Any suggestions from anyone with previous experience would be most welcome.

I intend to construct the hull out of splines. Lightwave v8

Many thanks.

[RonGC]

Why not try planar and see if it looks ok for your model. If not then go UV or even Nodal * Gasp *. In this way you gain valuable experience and can learn to make a value judgement on which way to go for future models texturing.

It is hard to give you a yes or no answer because i have no idea as to the design of this model.

An excellent guide to learning texturing is the Wordware publishing book Lightwave 3D 8 Texturing by Leigh van der Byl. ISBN 1-55622-285-8


Ron

[UnCommonGrafx]

UV, all the way.
If you are in it to learn, there is little to learn with planar mapping as it's so straight forward.

However, there is so much to learn when working with uvs and so many more options.

That said, give them all a try as it will be all of a half an hour of your time. Two, three months at the most... {said with a wry smile in retrospect of my own experiences...}

Also, go looking for the PLG uv mapping tools. They are a GODSEND for this purpose.

[Mr Mouse]

Thanks guys - yes it seems that uv is the way to go.
I'm guessing my choices are to modify the geometry as a uv endomorph to suite the texture map of horizontal planks or to paint the texture map to follow the existing curves of the boat.

The back of the boat flattens out so the planking down the sides has to meet the planking across the back.

I'm actually considering doing a wireframe render as a guide and just post produce the image as it will be a still rather than beating myself up if it's not for animation.

[Mr Mouse]

Strange that I can't find one tutorial on this anywhere on the web. Hmmm.

[UnCommonGrafx]

Umm,
You should. You can look at any, and I do mean ANY, uv tute to apply to lw.

Hecky darn, there are some even on NewTek's site. I'm on my way to bed but if you can't find any tonight, I'll assist on Saturday.

In the interim, look for stuff like "pelt", "uv layout" and "plg", the last being a lightwave specific item. Even check this forum for plg and uv layout. Also, look for William Vaughan (sp?), aka Proton. He is the one who has done the tutes.

[UnCommonGrafx]

As an example, I did a search on Vaughan and got this thread:
http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=79771&highlight=vaughan

[Giacomo99]

The back of the boat flattens out so the planking down the sides has to meet the planking across the back.

You know you don't need to texture the entire boat with a single surface, right? Which is to say, you can use multiple planar maps. If all the planks need to be the same width, setting up the UVs might get extremely tricky.

Please post screen caps of what you're doing--people here will be able to offer better feedback if you do.

[Hopper]

The back of the boat flattens out so the planking down the sides has to meet the planking across the back.
That's cool, but dude... seriously .. new avatar. Really. We won't mind. :eek:



And you guys bitched about my bug ...? lol

[Mr Mouse]

Ok here's my quick tester file for practicing a uv approach - when I come to build the final piece I'll keep many of the parts separated for ease of texturing - still it shows the flattened area at the back joining the planking down the side

http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj44/merry9str/boats.jpg

Hopefully this will give you kindly fellows a better idea.

Many thanks

[Mr Mouse]

Just to let you know I also tried the plg tools and Blender, following some of Steve Warner's tutorials howver not really know much about eiher it gave me a nice pelt effect but perhaps not the best solution with regard ease of painting the planking.

Would you consider this is a job for hand editing with endomorphs and aligning points of the planking structure using 1 planar of both sides and 1 planar back etc for the main hull.

My small rodent head's a hurtin'

Yours etc

Mr Mouse

[Surrealist.]

Reduce the number of polys on the hull. It looks subpached and you don't need that much geometry.

Then take a look at some real hull references. If the planks wrap around to the stern like that they would be one piece. This would be perfect fot UV mapping. Otherwise the flat stern would be a separate pice I believe. Check into it.


The UV mapping for this should be a real peice of cake. It will be much simpler with less geometry. Just make sure your UV map has Subpatch Interpolation.

If you are having trouble with UV mapping. Try working with something simpler first to get the hang of it.

Here is a page with some references (http://www.admiraltyshipmodels.co.uk/acatalog/Model_Building.html).

[Mr Mouse]

Thanks Richard, for some further tips and links.

[dwburman]

In the days before UV mapping we'd tackle this by dividing the surface up in sections and use projection maps for the front, back and sides and have to paint alpha channels to blend the seams. Either that or morph it out flat, texture it and morph it into place in Layout... at least that's how I would've tackled it... I didn't actually build anything comparable back then.

Actually, you wouldn't have to divide it up into different surfaces if you were using layers. you could keep the bow image from reaching the stern (if my nautical terms are correct) with a falloff value.

In LW 5.6 I think you may have had to separate the surfaces...

UV's make this stuff better... I need to brush up on them tho.

[Mr Mouse]

I thought I post up my findings and hopefully other might find them useful and perhaps people with more experience may add comment and improve on my method.

Planking a hull with uv texture:

Points I learned:
All the fancy pants details of the hull do not need to be modeled because it will be under the water so avoid the temptation to waste time.

Working on one half of the boat and mirroring save’s time and simplifies your task with creating and editing the uv’s .

As much as possible create separate mesh parts for the hull , leaving the construction of the hull as simple as possible - this makes the task of uv'ing easier also.Seek texturing ease rather than modeling kudos.

Creating uv's for the a simple hull and then adding thickness will add the uv's to the inside of the hull.

Method 1: PLANAR working on half a hull:

a boat hull (half mesh) facing down the z axis - mapped as a planar endomorph down the x axis, swinging the back polys out of it’s flattened end to also face down the x ( if you don’t have a flattened back end this will be of no issue)

When you have finished with your endomorph> clear it fom the vertex panel and merge points.

the seam polys were marked as a part and cut from the uv map by unwelding first and clearing it from the uv map

the uv map was then layed out according to the texture map which has straight boards. A plugin was used to align and space out the uv's so that the straight planks of the texture map followed the curves of the hull.http://www.pictrix.jp/lw/UVT_even/index.html

>the mesh was then mirrored which also mirrors the uv map

Thickness was added which added a new uv polys between the outside and inside at the top of the uv map.

The hull mesh was copied to a new layer and used to create a rim detail and seam/bow details - with unwanted polys being cut away > the original uv for this from the first uv texture map was culled, but could be used as the basis for new uv mapping


note that copying polys from uv’ed meshs also takes with it their associated uv maps to a new layer > these can be given a new name/modified or cleared if required

NB: adding new geometry to the uv mapped mesh does not add new uv’s
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hull mapping: Cylindrical Method


rotate the boat -90-degrees so the hull seam faces down the x and cylindrical map around the y - using a GreatBox to take accurate proportions.
the boat/ship must be initially whole and not one half for this to work - later 1 half is cut away to save time because later when the mesh is mirrored- the uv's are duplicated to the other half- saving work.

select the seam and give it a part name -this will be cleared from the uv map by first unwelding all the points because it is not required as it will be hidden by a separate mesh later.

now on the original layer unweld all points and clear the seam from the uv map - now merge

>select 1 half of boat in the uv map (the right hand side) and cut - this cuts the polys as well as the uv’s because all points were welded.
>give the hull mesh a surface name

now straighten space and and arrange the uv map so that a planking texture map can be applied with ease that will follow the curves along the length of the hull
When this is completed - mirror and merge the hull.

Now copy the whole mesh to a new layer - the mesh will be useful for building other parts that are separate from the hull mesh - so copy these polys to a new layer cull/clear the uv map that is also copied over to the new layer.


to clear parts from a uv map the points have to be unwelded
to align uv points using the plugin http://www.pictrix.jp/lw/UVT_even/index.html- NB: the points of the uv map have to be merged before the plugin works correctly/

[Mr Mouse]

Using the GreatBox method can be found here http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/tutorials/uvmapping/uv_mapping/clean_uv/index.html

[meshpig]

Nice Hull...

My theory is you make as big a map for as small a part of the geometry as you can.

So, rather than model the whole and map it later you think like a ship-builder and make segments via copy and paste with essentially the one map repeated over.

That takes care of the Hull and for the other parts you "make UV's" and add them to the same map.

-As it is though; cut it down the middle and deal with just the one side. Mirror it later.

If you want to use a planar map, assign a morph target to the existing state and then try flattening it. Make the UV map (or several) and then can the morph.

Or, a segment by surface Atlas map then unweld. For all the planks it's easy enough to combine them all in one place. But you can just keep adding to the UV's ( using make UV's) to the same map as you go.

m

[othornton]

Hi Mr Mouse,

I would suggest something a little less orthodox, like combining one or more UV Maps. Using LW's Surface Baking Camera it is easy to bake a planar texture to a more complex map. For example:
-create pelt/unwrap UV map
-create planar map. Create texture and paint hull lines. If you haven't watched Proton's vid on maintaining UV proportions you may want to.
-Apply hull lines as texture map. For best results I think you'll want to use nodal and apply it to the luminosity and diffuse channels. Could be wrong.
-Turn off shadows and use Surface Baking Camera to bake hull lines to pelt/unwrap map.

This technique should give you a good base for the hull lines on a pelted map. The inside, outside and back of the hull's lines will match up exactly. Paint wood texture, bolts, etc on a seperate layer and blend with hull lines to get final texture.

Hope this makes sense. Of course using PLG's plugin you could just use UV edges to 'cut' the planking out of the model since your geometry flow matches up with the flow of hull lines, but that's another story entirely.

Happy UV-ing!

-Oliver

[meshpig]

Hey, that's pretty cool.

m

[Mr Mouse]

Meshpig many thanks.

Oliver many thanks for your reply -I'm not sure I understand your method - I'm not familiar with the baking technique .
I have v8 for the mac and sadly the plg tools do not work - that said I can create a pelt using Blender instead.

Would it be possible to show some screen grabs of your method?

Best wishes.