Complex Materials - conclusion.

I have only scratch the surfase on modeling and textures.


First of all is preparation of the model.

• Reduce unnesasery polygons
• Attach your objects smartly.Unexperienced I did not now if I should attach, boolean or group my objects. This created additional work for me as I had to  select individual parts and apply the uvw unwrap repetedly.
• Badly made objects will produce bad effects. The dreadnaughts mangled arm was made with a series of modifiers noice wave. In the future I would not create it this way because it produced bad results even with the viewport canvas.

Selecting your method.
I have learned 3 methods to create materials:

•  the uv editor
• Multy Sub object material
• Viewport canvas
 

My favorite for its capabilities is viewport canvas, but I will be using Multy sub object also for its ease of use and siplicity and you can always use UVW map with a material bitmap. And of cource you can use more thna one method per character. I have had a tacle and a stragle with the materials of the dreadnaught but learned so much out of it. 

When I worked with the necron models I learned how to create materials within the material editor and how one material may containg another material and that another. The rusty Chain with bump within bump and the smoke from the exaust which for opacity had a gradient that ended with a smoke effect.

Group,attach or boolean?

Group, attach or boolean?
3ds max offers 3 ways of uniting objects: Group,attach and  boolean.
 Up untill now I could create my objects but did not now how to unit them.

I did not now how the bone system  and animation works, attach seems the best way.
Boolean is pretty much excluded because it unites and makes 1 object out of 2, which does not allow us to rotate and move the once 2 objects seperatly.
So I wanted to animate the the first part of my animation the scene with the claw.

 

Here is my model:

So I wanted to make the claw move in a jerky move to indicate that it is disabled, I  wanted the round part to rotate and the claws to open and close. So I decided to do the rotation first and then work on the claws opening and closind individualy.

So if I select the objects involved the the object will rotate around their pivot point offering me no good.

If I group and center the pivot point then the rotation works fine. You can see the time frames above.

Next step was to ungroup and  rotate the talons individualy. The problem is once i ungroup the key frames are still there but there is no animation, the reason for this is because the key frame remembers the position of the objects as a group and not as individual objects.

So groouping  and boolean are not good options for animation, that leaves me with attach.

And attach is the ideal object here, it works with bones and units the objects but still allows you to rotate and move them within.

So to recap:

Boolean unite: good to create one solid object out of 2 or more objects. Expect to use boolean unit to create your objects but not to unite them. and not for animations.

              Cons: can only unite 2 per operation, if a convert to is applied the operation is unreversable.

               Pros: creates solid shapes.

Group: good to group and move a set of objects around or rotate.

     Cons: One in group objects can not be altered, does not work well with animation.

     Pros: you can make large grouping and ungrouping very fast and easy, you can also have groups of groups.

Attach : great for animations and unite body parts together

            Cons and pros are not given since its the only one that can be used for animation.

       

Viewport Canvas

4) Viewport canvas
This is by far my favorite method of applying textures is Viewport canvas.

viewport Canvas is a new feature in 3ds max 2011.

Viewport canvas allows you to paint direclty on to the model like a painter on a real life object.
It is good because you can paint freely  ignoring polygons and edges so you can have a realistic looking texture quite easy. The only way to achieve the same effect would be to perfectly stich all tthe polygons in the UV editor and then paint in photoshop.
Viewport canvas comes with all the tools to create burn marks, oil stains (smudge tool) and has a set of brushes to create rust, wood , concrete and skin effects. It supports multiple layers as photoshop.
  When painting a object which is a sum of attached objects (which is the case with character models) , you can select an object within and  create a mask to ensure you are painting only the desired object.
 You can take the image in photoshop and paint save and the changes will appear within 3ds max.
 Bellow is the rendered guard pad I textured using Canvas viewport.

This texture has all the effects I wanted
my targets were:

• Cover it all with a damaged metal look
• Add sumbols and insignia on various parts
• Add paint chipping 
• Add burn marks.

These were all achieved with vieport canvas with very little experience.

So now I will explain briefly how it was done.
First it requires a minimal of unrapping to start painting.
So I add an unwrap modifier   go to uv editor select all the polygons and flaten the objects polygons.
That is all that is needed in the uvw editor, I close the window and convert to editable poly (the object still remembers its points).
I then open the viewport canvas and select the paint brush it will ask you to save the file before it begins.

 From there on you can add layers and  add effects just as photoshop.


Finaly one other way of adding logos or brushes is to create your own.
Save your logo or brush as a tif file and plase it in the \ViewportCanvas\Custom Brushes folder
Bellow you can see a logo that I applied at the chest piece.

I did most of the dreadnaught using viewport canvas.

I will make a few conclutions about creating materials after I share some thoughts.

Complex Materials

I did previously mention how I created  some of the textures for the necron lord, the gas the lights and the chrome.
After handing in my models I started working on the texturing the dreadnaught.
I set my several tasks with the dreads material, which were:

• Cover it all with a damaged metal look
• Add sumbols and insignia on various parts
• Add paint chipping 
• Add burn marks.

Bellow are some methods I used/tried to get my desired result.

1)UVW map+ unwrap UVW+Photoshop
Initially I dived in selecting a knee guard and worked with the notes from the lecture,
I made a UVW map
Then a  unwrap UVW and then flaten it.
Stiching the layers and putting each part together is quite hard and I am not that strong in that part.
I took the image I created took it to photoshop and added my beaten metal texture and the blood angel logo.

But then when it was very hard to paint the battle damage and oil stains when the area you are working in is split into more than one polygon. You needed to go back and forth photoshop to 3ds max. And even if you do do the perfect job some shapes get streched even with uvw unwrapping.


Saying that I did realize a very important tip. Something that is in general good practice but is even more when UVW unwraping: Minimize the Number of Polygons
That is nothing new and I tried to make my shapes with only the nesassery polygons but even then after a few boolean opperations extra pollygons were added, initially I thought they were nessasery but then I noticed that these extra polygons appeared even on flat surfaces.

This was one of my attempts of texturing the top part of the dread, if you look at the left side I have selected the left side,after some boolean operations I changed it to editable poly and selected edges.
You can see on a flat surface 5 edges creating aditional polygons. When you unrap the texture those polygons create more work for you and add to the complexity.

 In the following image I have deleted the edges to reduce unwanted complexity.

 Then when I Unwrap the selected polygon it gives me one nice solid shape.

 But still when I add a simple texture it does not work.  (After my grinding with textures I have realised that a UVW mapping was needed in order to work properly)

So if I removed all the unwanted polygons and managed to stich and rotate my flatened polygons together then yes I could draw them on photoshop. That is alot of work, and quite hard. So I looked for another method.

2)Multy Sub object material- practical workouts.
After my initial failure it was time in class to work the tutorialsfor materials. The first one was simmular to my first attempt but the house was easier and less complex, it did show me that you can select o unwrap object diffrently producing diffrent results (spherical cylindrical box e.t.c.) but I already tried that method and wanted to see if it could be done else wise.
The second tutorial was quite intresting using a Multi sub object material. How it works:

• You modify your object to editable poly and then you select polygons and give them a meterial id value.
• Then in the material Editor create a Multi sub object material which consist of diffrent materials which you assign a id number. Then every polygon with the same id will be covert with that material.

I thought this was my solution, in the example of the knee guard I would selct the front part where the logo is and set it to 1 everything else set to 2.  Create a Multi sub object material with two channels . channel 2 would be a bitmap material of the beaten metal texture and 1 would be the same metal beated texture with the sumbol added.
 I did create it (sorry no pictures) ansd came to a few conclutions.
pros

• Easy to use and work with, if you miss a polygon select it and change the ID. 
• You can add polygons and add materials without needing to start all over again. 

Cons

• If you have a surface with many diffrent bitmaps you need to create a texture for each one. while the other method used only one bitmap which could have had diffrent textures added by photoshop.
• Complex way of adding marks and damage.

Still it was hard to apply  the battle damage and burn marks and rust. So I looked for another method, I had seen online videos of people paint models on zbrush, the same way I would paint a miniature with an airbrush.
So I looked into that.

3)Exporting my model to be painted in Z brush
I dont actualy own zbrush so I down loaded two freeware look a likes, photoshop has gimp, office has open office and z brush has paint 3d and blender. I downloaded them and instaled them, and I exported my dread as an .OBJ. It was cool looking at my creation in another 3d app but 3d paint crashed a couple of times and blender was a whole new app I needed to familiarize in order to work with. I was not having any progress with it. While looking for online help for painting it in blender I stumbled on a 3ds max tutorial. Relieved I uninstaled those programs and went back to 3ds max.

4) Vieport Canvas.
This will be described tomorrow in my next post. It deserves a post on its own.

First part of the assignment done, still half to go.

The last post was before I handed in my assignment, after that I was a bit burned out for a week and very busy at work and life, after that I have been super active but have not posted anything so I need to get back track. I have been heavily working or trying to get my dreadnaught textured, then I half created my enviroment and then worked on lighting. The hardest bit was the texturing, but I think I have learned alot.

Most encouraging part is I got an A in the first part which is rewarding and encouraging to continue.
So first part of the assignment done, still half to go.