Week 12 - Texturing my Model
This Week i began to tackle the UV mapping, i followed a very hand tutorial (linked below) which diverged from the Lynda tutorial quite significantly. i chose to follow this tutorial as opposed to the Lynda tutorial for 2 reasons. 1. the Lynda tutorial was done some 4-5 years ago at this point, and Maya is massively updated since then, so it is a better idea to follow a more contemporary tutorial, and 2. This method allows me to minimise the amount and size of files i use on my model, meaning that my model will be better optimised and render faster.
In addition to these, this tutorial pointed me at a set of official tools that are not advertised in the actual program itself. my method is as follows:
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| To Begin with, i watched the tutorial, which pointed me in the direction of a Maya Plug-in from Auto-desk itself (publishers of Maya). This plug in, labelled BONUS TOOLS, has an auto unwrap UV tool. While it claims it is an Automatic tool, you still have to manually cut the UV's yourself. How this tool works is: 1. You select part of the model you want to Unwrap e.g. The Jumper 2. you go to Bonus Tools > UV tools > Auto Unwrap UV tools 3. It will open up a window in which you can select edges, you select the edges you want to cut and click the add borders button 4. Once you have selected all the edges you want, click the continue buttons and it will cut the UV mesh along the lines you have selected. 5. Then, open up the UV editor and flatten the UV and move it into the top square |
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| I went and followed this method to cut all my UV's. This technique was very helpful and shaved off hours of work i can now spend on painting my models textures. While i could have manually cut the UV following the tutorial linked below, these Plug in are provided by Auto desk themselves, so are not only safe to use, but also have no negative consequences later down the road, where using a 3rd party software may have had a problem when it comes to assigning my textures. Once i had finished cutting and re-arranging the UVs into a map, i used the UV snapshot tool to creat a template for my textures, i then opened this up in photoshop and began painting the textures. |
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| Another Deviation from the Lynda Tutorial is the decision to make my Textures all on one Image plane. Again following a tutorial (linked below) i did this for the following reasons. 1. If i have a single texture sheet for each individual part of the body, that means, that when it comes to rendering and loading my character into a scene, Maya will have to individually load say 12 textures individually, Not only increasing the pressure on the GPU, which while my PC at home would have no problem with this, the Computer and Mac's at University would begin to struggle to cope. In addition to this because it will have to read 12 textures one after the other, the loading time will just generally be longer, as the model will be less optimised. 2 If i created 12 textures that are some 1000 x 1000 pxl each, the size of the textures will be about 1-2mb each, depending on the detail of the area. if i have 12 of these the total file size of the images will be anywhere between 12mb-24mb. My single texture, while it is a size of 8000 x 8000, only is 8mb in size, therefore it is a lot better optimised and will load fast than having all the textures separate. This will also reduce the time it will take my character to render For these reason i decided to follow the method i did, 8000plx was more than adequate to paint my textures with ample detail. |
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| I combined hand painting with photo textures, either taken by myself or which were royalty free, Once i was happy with how the painting was coming along, i save the file as a Jpeg, so as to not overload Maya when using the Image. and went to import my textures into Maya |
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| To assign my textures to the model, i first opened the Hypershader, and selected the part of the model i wanted to assign textures to. I can assign different materials to different parts of the body. For example, for the jumper and jeans. i assigned a Lambert Material a matt material which doesn't have reflective properties, i then assigned my textures to this material and scaled it to fit the jumper. For Materials that i wanted to have a sheen to them, i assigned a blinn material to them. i can alter the materials properties in the hyperspace, such as level or reflection, how shiny the surface is etc. I used these for the leather boots and the eyes. |
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| As you can see, my textures didn't quite match where i wanted them to go, so i made adjustments to my textures as seem below. |
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| Here is the completed model with textures assigned, you can see the difference in materials between the Clothing and shoes. |
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| Here is a close up of the face, on hindsight i was a little unhappy with how the eyes came out, while i like the reflection on the eyes, i feel that they could be more details and look more realistic. As of now, i am really happy with the overall look of the model. It really makes me happy to see a character that i have created and grown to care about, come to life in such a convincing way. Even more so to know that i was the one who made this model. While i had some problems with the hair and the mouth bag, i feel the model has come together with relative ease, and i could see myself taking this part of animation further, and into a potential career. |
Hypershade Tutorials:
Texturing Tutorials:
UV unwrapping tutorial:
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