If You Have Lightwave 8 Upgrade To 8.2!

[Demigod]

My brother being a nice chap, just bought me a copy of lightwave 8. A thousand ponds isn’t a laughing matter but he is a nice chap as I said. Any way I have spent the afternoon and evening trying to get a simple block into doom3 and have it textured properly. I struggled mightily to get it to work but the uv mapping would not allow me to change the points I wanted. The wall behind my desk has several new dents in it and I have lost yet more hair I can ill afford to loose.

Anyway the nice chap saw what I was doing and said "oh didn’t I tell you, you need to download the 8.2 patch to get uv mapping to work properly?"

 

Now he just spent a thousand pounds on me that I didn’t ask for but his throat seemed to have a magnetic pull for my hands. I resisted and instead created yet another dent in the wall and downloaded the update and it works! I can now get the maps into doom3 and I’m learning how to uv map slowly.

 

I think 3dmax is much better at uv mapping but allot worse at everything else It would be really nice if lightwave had a cubic map under uv map types but it doesn’t.

 

I’ve asked over at doom3world but Ill ask here too, can anyone point me to some tutorials on uv mapping in doom3?

[Dram]

2 things:

 

LOL and

 

Holy fucken shit!?!

[Pyrian]

Always check for a patch.

[oDDity]

THe Uv mapping changes in 8.2 are only useful for subpatch objects. Since we're working with polygonal objects for export to doom, it's a trvial difference.

What you experienced with not being able to move certain vertices on the UV map, is that when you use a cylindrical, spherical or atlas mapping, you have to unweld the points in order to move the verts along the 'cut' edge of the map.

THe best way to Uv map in lightwave is to make a morph map and then unfold the geomety in sections into a series of planes. Then you just planar project all the maps.

Nothing's harder to unfold than characters, and I can unfold a character to planes in about an hour. Something like a cube should take about 30 seconds.

THink of it like the opposite of cutting the correct T shapee out of a piece of paper and then folding it into a cube.

Edited April 26, 2005 by oDDity

[Demigod]

I must be honest that just went over my head. I have had a look at the tutorials at newtek and they arent very helpful. can you point me in the right direction?

 

Thanks

 

Edit; oh and how can i have multiple object use the same surface but with differant uv settings?

Edited April 26, 2005 by Demigod

[oDDity]

Just give them all the same surface name. THey will use the same shader in doom.

I don't know why you'd want to do that though, since the images you use tend to be painted for specific uv maps.

[Demigod]

Im making some of the architeture with object's as the bsp seems to freak with some complex brushes(I dont know why) One object I made in max that shows what I mean is here

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=1845

 

Im just using one of the wall textures and applying it to my objects. The arched celler shown in that thread comprises of 9 objects with each of those having about 50 subobjects making the whole. While alot are the same shape and can share the same uvmap alot need a different uvmap.

 

The reason Ive moved from max to lightwave, is the formats. The ase file for the whole celler comes out at 25mb where as the comparable lwo is 2mb (from a converted 3ds)

 

Also as far as I can find I can only have one uvmap assigned to a surface.

Edited April 26, 2005 by Demigod

[oDDity]

Yeahmit'd work fine for that then since it's all the same generic brick textures. Just give all the objects the same surface name.

Though I'd suggest making the curved edges of the pillars a dirty concrete grey or something, rather than just the same continous brick.

[Demigod]

I seem to have it working a bit better now. I can get most things (this object) sorted with an atlass map. and it comes out looking better than 3dmax

Now to work out how to do tubing in lightwave.

[oDDity]

Atlas mapping isn't a good idea, it leaves too many seams.

Tubing can be achived by using the disc tool to make a circle and beveling or extending it.

[oDDity]

BTW, here's a great site for learning all the basic tools in Lightwave.

http://www.suture.net/tutorials/modeling/index.php

[Demigod]

Thank you for the link

 

Oh If I dont use atlas what do you suggest? planar just seems to show me one face the others of a block for example, I cant change at all. It doesnt seem to unwrap the object for some reason.

Edited April 26, 2005 by Demigod

[Fingernail]

you need to select a face, unweld it and then planar map it in it's correct orientation.

 

More or less. Then merge points so you get smoothing back and the mesh is whole again.

[Demigod]

Hmm that is a little complicated though

 

Here is planar map for this object, all the bits using this material anyway