United3dArtists Archive

Guys,

Is it possible to make new textures in an App like, say, Photoshop, and add them to the materials/texture library?

Can't find anything about it in the Manual, (but then I've missed stuff before.)

Thanks,
Kurt.

Yes it is possible to make textures or use photographs as a material.

Are you using the modelside or the workspace side?

as v3er3 says, it's possible.

Any Jpg, Png, Bmp, Tga file, can be used as a texture.

You can also go around your hose and take pictures with your own digital camera..
Take pictures of the grass, wood, sky..etc.. then you can use all those pictures to texture your own 3d scenes..

i can recommend you to use Google Images to find textures.. just put wood texture and you will be amazed the number of textures... the combination is endless..

v3rd3 wrote:Yes it is possible to make textures or use photographs as a material.

Are you using the modelside or the workspace side?

I'm mostly using WorkSpace now, v3rd3.

Prodigy wrote:as v3er3 says, it's possible.

Any Jpg, Png, Bmp, Tga file, can be used as a texture.

You can also go around your hose and take pictures with your own digital camera..
Take pictures of the grass, wood, sky..etc.. then you can use all those pictures to texture your own 3d scenes..

i can recommend you to use Google Images to find textures.. just put wood texture and you will be amazed the number of textures... the combination is endless..

Prodigy, I already have so many pictures on my computer, I probably don't have much room for any more!

So I can start inserting them into the libraries as materials... And presumably they can be used as backgrounds, too.

What's the best size and resolution to make them, for best output in animations, Prodigy?

Thanks,
Kurt.

All depends on your needs.

If you need quality on your render have in mind use good textures size, (1024x768 or better should do the trick)

But if you have to do small objects (example big trees but on the background)
use low quality textures will give you better performance, same render quality and your system will have more resources (free memory) for other more important objects or textures..

I always use 256x256px for low textures and if you need some extra quality textures use 512x512px and i need excellent quality (most for still renders) i use the highest as possible..

Try to read what is and how create seamless textures.. this will help you a lot to use your textures on your scenes.. i'll try to find some articles and if it's possible a free software

Thanks, Prodigy. I appreciate your help.

Kurt wrote:So I can start inserting them into the libraries as materials...(?)

You don't need to insert them into your tS Library. Save them as separate texture files, just as you do with your other pictures...then pull them up when needed, and add the desired texture (jpeg) to your "Caligari Material" in order to be 'painted' on your object.

But if you are working on Workspace and wanted to create a material library you can,

By starting with a basic material and modefying it in the Link editor. I will generally start with the Mapped BINN since it has all the links established. I will dive into the link editor a few levels to get to the material, delete out the shaders I do no want, change the shaders I do not like, (For example, if you are not using a picture you can change your color shader to the Blend colors) I change the Model shader to the default for additional options outside the BINN shader. Once you ahve everything set within the material itself, with your normalmap loaded, your texture loaded, your alpha, etc.... you find the material int eh LE, generally nammed mapped BINN, if that is the one you started with, renaim it to what you want, right click in your library and save as DX material. Now you just have to drag and drop it to any object you want to have that material. With enough work you could build a nice material library. The Material shader that Prodigy is working on is going into a lot more detail and pulling options up levels from the LE to make the material easier to edit and putting all the options in one place, which would be nice.

That's more grist for the mill, Karthogen. Thanks a lot.

Cheers,
Kurt.

If you want to create your own texture libraries you can do this.
use the library browser in WS.
Create a new library .
you can create one for eg *.bmp and it will accept other image formats as well.
double click your new library and it will open in the stack.
Use windows explorer select all the image files and D+D them into the library in the stack.
this method gets around the limitation of only being able to import one file at a time from the import menu.
then you can dock your custom library to the interface and easily D+D the textures from it onto a valid bitmap input area in a shader or material.


chapter 2 section 2.3.4 of the pdf covers some aspects of creating custom libraries.

Cayenne wrote:If you want to create your own texture libraries you can do this.
use the library browser in WS.
Create a new library .
you can create one for eg *.bmp and it will accept other image formats as well.
double click your new library and it will open in the stack.
Use windows explorer select all the image files and D+D them into the library in the stack.
this method gets around the limitation of only being able to import one file at a time from the import menu.
then you can dock your custom library to the interface and easily D+D the textures from it onto a valid bitmap input area in a shader or material.


chapter 2 section 2.3.4 of the pdf covers some aspects of creating custom libraries.

Good idea, I'll do that. Be nice to be able to use my own "collection", once I've collected some.

Thanks, Cayenne.

Kurt