I would like to practice my texturing on a nice-looking model of an animal, preferably a horse or a big cat, but a dragon, or a wolf, anything like that would be fine. Doesn't need to be animated or anything. I want to use blender to test my textures in, so it should be compatible with that, and it would be helpful if it came with a texture I could look at as an example. I also want to be able to display my texturing attempts on my webpage, with a note that I didn't make the model, so whatever license the model has should be compatible with that. So, anyone have a model to lend or a suggestion of one I could download from somewhere, preferably without being required to create an account there? Also a recommendation for a tutorial on texture unwrapping and applying textures in blender would be cool.

free dog,cat,mouse models: http://www.psionic3d.co.uk/?page_id=25
gimp/blender unwrapping/texturing tutorial: http://otothecleaner.free.fr/tutorials/Gimpit/gimpit1/gimpit.html

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Ashaman

A dog
http://e2-productions.com/repository/modules/PDdownloads/viewcat.php?cid=7

Quote:Original post by Ashaman73
free dog,cat,mouse models: http://www.psionic3d.co.uk/?page_id=25
gimp/blender unwrapping/texturing tutorial: http://otothecleaner.free.fr/tutorials/Gimpit/gimpit1/gimpit.html

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Ashaman

I like this dog and I'd like to practice texturing it, but for some reason blender refuses to open the .b3d version of the file (says it is not a blender file), and when I try to import the milkshape version I mysteriously get a cube instead of anything resembling a dog. Could someone else check and see if they get the same error? I grabbed the free trial of milkshape to see if it looked okay there, and it does, but from everything I've read milkshape is buggy and terrible for trying to do texturing. The specific thing I want to do is export the wireframe of the dog unwrapped as a transparent png, and also save a version of the provided doberman texture with the wireframe superimposed on it.

Quote:Original post by Kaze
blender uses .blend, b3d is blitzbasic

Bleh, shows how clueless I am about this whole 3D art thing. :P Okay, so I opened the dog in milkshape, exported it as a wavefront object, imported that to blender, and I have a dog, yay. I split the screen, put the left half in 3D view: edit mode, and the right half in UV view, and I can see the wireframe superimposed on the dog texture, yay again. But, the wireframe is only the pure side view and appears to be missing the ears, while the texture extends beyond the wireframe to show the sides and back of the legs and other pieces. So 1. how do I get the wireframe to display matching the way the texture is wrapped onto the model, and 2. how do I then save a version of this wireframe superimposed on the texture, and the wireframe alone on a transparent background?

Quote:
But, the wireframe is only the pure side view and appears to be missing the ears, while the texture extends beyond the wireframe to show the sides and back of the legs and other pieces.

I can't take a look at the model at the moment, but it sounds like the dog has (accidentally) being unwrapped by a simple uv-projection.

Before unwrapping you need to mark edges as seams (seams will not be imported). Here is a short tutorial to unwrap the dog in 10 mins:

-- seams
1. go into edit mode
2. select edge mode
3. unselect all (press a until anything is selected)
4. select all edge which will half the dog
5. mark selected edges as seams(press ctrl+E -> mark as seams)
6. unselect all (3.)
6. select edges pointing inside along the legs
7. mark selected edges as seams
-- test
8. select face mode
9. unselect all
10. move the mouse over one face and press l (select linked faces)
11. if you have correctly marked all seams, one half of the dog will be selected
12. if not, try to find a "leaking" edge you have missed
-- unwrap
13. select face mode
14. select all (press a until everything has been selected)
15. press ctrl+u and select "unwrap" (top)
16. now all faces should be displayed in a more or less unwrapped way in the uv-image editor
-- save uv
17. before exporting uv coords you need to save the blend file (seems to be a bug[version 2.48]).
18. save UV now (Kaze:".. UVs-> scripts-> save uv face layout.")


You could now paint the texture and reload it. If you want to see the texture while rendering, you need to assign a material to the dog and assogm the texture to this material. After base unwrapping works you could do the following:
1. Create a test grid texture (UV window->image->new->select 'test grid').
With this test grid you could easily check for an equal distribution of texels.
2. The UV mesh can be handled like a normal mesh grid: select whole mesh parts by moving your mouse over a vertex and press l(select linked), rotate (press r), scale(press s) or move (press ? t or m, not sure).
3. You could paint directly in blender by using the texture-mode (selected from the menu where you switch between object and edit mode). Use this mode to paint in the 3d view, this will help you to find the correct location on the texture (i.e. eyes) and it is much easier to get rid of texture seams (use version 2.49). Fine tuning can be done in gimp.

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Ashaman

Quote:Original post by Ashaman73

Quote:
But, the wireframe is only the pure side view and appears to be missing the ears, while the texture extends beyond the wireframe to show the sides and back of the legs and other pieces.

I can't take a look at the model at the moment, but it sounds like the dog has (accidentally) being unwrapped by a simple uv-projection.

Before unwrapping you need to mark edges as seams (seams will not be imported). Here is a short tutorial to unwrap the dog in 10 mins:

-- seams
1. go into edit mode
2. select edge mode
3. unselect all (press a until anything is selected)
4. select all edge which will half the dog
5. mark selected edges as seams(press ctrl+E -> mark as seams)
6. unselect all (3.)
6. select edges pointing inside along the legs
7. mark selected edges as seams
-- test
8. select face mode
9. unselect all
10. move the mouse over one face and press l (select linked faces)
11. if you have correctly marked all seams, one half of the dog will be selected
12. if not, try to find a "leaking" edge you have missed
-- unwrap
13. select face mode
14. select all (press a until everything has been selected)
15. press ctrl+u and select "unwrap" (top)
16. now all faces should be displayed in a more or less unwrapped way in the uv-image editor

I followed these steps (thank you very much for explaining ^_^ ) but the unwrap looks the same, incorrect. I think it will not look right unless I make more seams - should be one up the inside of each leg, one on each ear?

Edit: yes I added some more seams and now it unwraps to a good shape, although now I can't figure out how to make it apply the texture to both sides of the model, or at least pack the two sides efficiently onto the texture. Not a big problem though, since I'm not worried about efficiency or saving space at the moment. I will test color this tomorrow and try to stick it back on the model.

[Edited by - sunandshadow on August 3, 2009 7:42:03 AM]