Creating Seamless Textures
Hello guys and girls,
Finally I found the time to do the tutorial about creating seamless textures within 3dsmax, I used 3dsmax 5 when I made the pictures, but you can use version 6, 7 or 8 also, using version 8 with it's peltmapping would also make it easier. And here we go.
As you can see in that picture, there is an ugly seam between the hair part and the face, well I brightened the face up, just for that demonstration, the actual texture isn't that colored.
Well you may say, that you can remove that seam easily by using projection within ZBrush, Deeppaint3d or Bodypaint, but this tutorial is aimed for people who don't have one of these packages. Everyone who owns one of those can stop reading now ;)
As you can see in this picture, it will be fairly hard to remove the edge just in Photoshop. This is because of the different sizes and rotations of the uv clusters I am using.
So I have to do it another way, normally I'd just start deep paint and use the projection mode, or zBrush with the projection master and/or zAppLink.
Facing this problem I "invented" my own projection mode, well I don't know if anyone else is doing it this way, so correct me if I didn't invent it :D
At first you have to setup your Stack for this.
Just put an unwrap modifier on top of the stack and set it to Map Channel 1.
Now put another unwrap on top of the first one and set it to Map Channel 2, and select the faces with the seam.
There I just use the unfold mapping to generate a new set of UVs for that part well there are a lot of open edges, which I have to fix. If you're using 3dsmax 8 you might use pletmapping for that, you'll have the same result in less time.
Ok I fixed it and set up my checker Map to see if it is without stretching. You can get my Checker right there href="images/checker_512.gif" target="_blank">checker_512.gif or you may download this plugin if you're using 3dsmax 8 href="images/uvwunwrap.zip" target="_blank">uvwunwrap.dlm ,this will replace the nasty eye destroying default-checker that comes with Max 8 and will give the relex modifier a real default button, the current one doesn't save anything by default, I don't know why they called it default ;)
The next step is to set up the render to texture dialogue.
I'll use the map channel 2, to use my new UVs with the old texture, and set up the Texture size to 1024² if everything is set up right select the diffuse map as the element that will be rendered, don't create lighting and shadows into that map, because it will darken the texture and won't work on the final texture which has none of those shadows and the lights.
That is the result, my old texture is baked onto the new Uvs.
Now in photoshop I over painted the seam by smudging and painting over it and added that pink stripe to show the result on the final map, the whole thing is done pretty dirty, but well it's just to show my way to create better seams.
Now I'm doing the texture-bake-thing just backwards, put the new texture onto the model, and setup the render to texture dialogue backwards, so use channel 01 with the texture which was drawn for channel 2 the picture on the right is the result.
Back in PS I just grab the new parts and move them to my old texture page.
And there are now a few new seams which where created with the texture bake, I marked them with red, but they can easily get erased, so you don't have to mind about them.
This is what you get.
And there it is, the final result, without the seam between the hair and the facial part, hopefully this will help some of you, if this is too much work for you, just take ZBrush, deeppaint3d or Bodypaint, but if you have the setup already made
once or twice it can be very effective.
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