Texturing a house

I have a problem with texturing. I want to create a house which is made of wooden slats. But I have no idea how achieve this. What I have to to with the 3D Model before starting texturing? How can I separate the single wooden slats? With separate I mean how to create black parts between the slats so that it can be seen that these are single slats ( I have the problem that it looks like just one area).
An example for what i mean is this http://onlinea1.com/vb/imgcache/2/4896alsh3er.gif
Thanks for help.
Greetings from Germany.

Not sure if i am understanding you correctly. All you need is a wooden texture with slats then put them on the house you can also use a bumpmap to make the slats looks raised. The walls themselves are just a cube with the wooden texture on them. I think that is what you are looking for

digiman

Sorry for my expression ( I’m from Germany).
I know that I can use one texture on the entire wall, but I want to have variations on every slat. I thought maybe I could divide the wall and then put different textures on each slat. But if I do this, I don’t know how to make it look like different slats and not just one face with a wooden texture. I think I have to create black parts between the slats. But how shall I do this?

I hope you will understand what I mean.

I am sorry i am having a hard time understanding I think you are confusing the wood texture with a wooden slat texture Check out this link I hope thsi is what you are asking for By the way your English is great
http://mayang.com/textures/Wood/html/Manufactured%20Wooden%20Items/index.html
You will find many types of wooden slat textures should be able to use that for a house and you can also go to texture paint mode to paint changes the those textures

digiman

Thanks for wasting your time to help me.
This texture paint mode is a great idea, but how do I use it. And in your previous post you said something about bump maps to make the slats look raised. But how do I do this?

When you are dealing with complex image textures, and also if you are texture painting, your best bet is UV mapping. This takes some learning. So find a good tutorial, or better yet, a few good tutorials, and spend some time learning UV mapping.

I was starting to write it out but believe me i will confuse you more, try these links I think they will help a lot
http://www.2shared.com/file/3297807/57781a62/BumpMapping_Tutorial.html

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Textures/UV/Painting_the_Texture

digiman

Thanks for the links. I watched a few tutorials about texturing now, but I am not sure if I have understood everything right. Maybe somebody could model a house, put a wooden slat texture on it (maybe also a tile texture for the roof) and then upload the blend file here. It would be very helpful if he could write what he did to get the textures right etc. . It does not have to be very much. Thanks for your help.

the way to accomplish this is slightly different from organic UV mapping, which is what is covered in most tuts. i’ll try to make some kind of illustration / example this evening.

I started making a mini tut last evening, but got kind of distracted. I will finish it up today though.

Thank you so much. Thanks for your efforts.

No problema, I’m just going to put these images up, and then add some commentary. Also, do you want to paint the actual tex in blender, or will you be using photoshop, or gimp?

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  1. so, this is my house, it’s kind of simple, but it’ll do. First thing to remember, is, when you are doing these first steps, you don’t want to zoom in or out in your 3D window, because we will be loading ‘from view’ and want to keep the scale consistent. Also, you’ll want to split your screen and have a UV editor open.
    So, first, select all the front facing polys of your house, and use key NumberPad1 to go into front view.
    Now, press U to get the UV loading menu ( attached image ) and select ‘project from view’.
  2. so, there is the front of my house, in the UV editor, over in the left hand corner. Don’t scale it, but move it into a corner. You can move stuff around in the UV editor with basically the same commands you use in edit mode and object mode in the 3D window. Repeat this process with the sides, and back of the house, but since the roof is at an angle, i used the regular ‘unwrap’ option to load it.
  3. Now you’ll want to optimize your space a bit, so move everything around until it fits neatly into a square space, then select all ( a key ) and scale it up, to the full size of the frame, and center it. Lastly, in the UV editor, add a new image. I tend to prefer white, but avoid gray, because that can get confusing while texture painting, due to the grayness of the cursor.
  4. Now, back in the 3D window, in solid draw mode, go into texture paint mode. Check your edit buttons for painting tools.
    Paint along all the main edges, and sketch in the major features of your house. You’ll see the image in the UV editor update as you paint.
  5. Now save your image from the UV editor, and that will be the base on which you paint your texture. ( so, I need to know what app you wish to paint your texture in to continue )
    (edit) just a couple of notes, first, I loaded the two sides of the house at the same time, so it looks like just one piece in the UV editor. Also, when you are loading the back, the hotkey for back view is ctrl 1. for left side view, it’s ctrl 3.

Thanks so far,
I don’t have Photoshop , so I could only take gimp to paint the texture. You said "Also, do you want to paint the actual tex in blender, or will you be using photoshop, or gimp? ". Well Gimp or Blender. I don’t know. Which should give the better result?

Well, the result would be about the same, but it would be easier in GIMP.
(edit) btw if you can describe the house to me, I may have some base textures you could use.
(edit) now that I think about it, it might be easier in blender, so I am going to continue this tut using blender. best to stay within one app anyway, when you can.

Ok, the next step is, I want to add this tiling board texture to my house, only there is a problem, in that the boards are too big, and they are going vertically, and I want them to go horizontally, so I am going to bake them onto my UV coords, after dfining their scale and rotation with an empty. So,

  1. I add an empty to my scene, from front view, and rotate it a quarter turn to the right. Also, I scale it down a bit.
  2. Now, in materials window, I add a new material, and also I add a texture channel of type: image. Then I load up my boards tex, and go back to materials window. In the map input panel, I change it to ‘object’ and ‘cube’. In the text field next to the ‘object’ button, I type the name of the empty. ( in this case, ‘Empty’ )
  3. Now go into edit made, with all faces selected, and go to the UV window, and add a new blank image. This will marry the UV coords to that image, for when we render bake it. Now, go to render buttons, and access the render baking panel. Click on ‘textures’, and then click ‘bake’. That should give you something like figure 3 in your UV window, so, save that image, and close your file.
    ( next step to be documented momentarily )

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Ok so, the next step will be to make an alpha texture for the doors and windows, by actually building them, and rendering them, minus the background.

  1. We’ll use the image we texture painted as a guide, so go to view>>background image and load it up, and click 'use background image. Delete your default camera, and add another from front view. Change your render resolution to a square ( such as 512 x 512 for instance ), and for your new camera, go to edit buttons and click ‘orthographic’.
  2. now, you want to add a plane just in front of the camera, and then go into camera view, and use that plane to start building your windows and doors, and anything else you want to be part of the texture. When you’ve made the various meshes, give them some materials, and lastly, add a plane where the wall would be, in relation to the windows and doors, and give that plane a material set to ‘only shadow’. you might want to turn the alpha slider down a bit too. Alsom make sure your lamp is set to cast shadows.
  3. Back in render buttons, click ‘RGBA’, and ‘premul’, and set image file type to ‘png’. And render. You should get something like the alpha texture shown below.
  4. Now go back to your original house file before you added any materials, and add a material. Add a texture channel, of type image, and load up your render baked boards. In the map input buttons in materials, click on UV. Go back to texture buttons, and add another channel, of type ‘image’. Load up your alpha texture with the windows and doors. make sure ‘use alpha’ is clicked on. Go back to materials, and set map input to UV. Your house should now look something like the render shown below.
    (edit) still more to come…

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Ok, so, to do the roof, I decided to texture paint it in the UV window, and then do a little post processing on it.

  1. So, first, go into edit mode, and in the UV window, exchange the image that is currently married to your UV coords, for the texture baked boards. Now click on the button that looks like a pencil in the UV window, to go into texture paint mode. Call up the tools with the C key. You can get pretty fancy here, with all the brush tools and what not, but I just went for the straight paint. Save the painted image, and open it in your preferred image editor/paint program, to adjust the levels, or use filters or add details, or whatever. Then you just exchange the repainted boards image for the original one and you’re good to go.

As you can imagine, there are many ways to go about this, but I hope this gives you some ideas. Of course, you can also add normal maps, ray mirror maps for the windows, or whatever you want, once you have the diffuse texture.
(edit) also, you could conceivably bake the whole thing to a new image file if you wanted the whole texture as one channel.

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Thanks for this tutorial. This should help me alot. And it really looks awesome. Thank you so much.
But I have an other problem. Not a texturing problem, but nobody is going to answer me in my modeling thread. I want to model a roof hangover. But I have no idea how to do that.

You’re welcome. Do you want it to have thickness, or just a two polygon roof?
(edit) I took a look at your other thread, and I’m just going to assume you meant a one piece structure with thickness. I’ll make an illustration, brb.