I’m not a complete n00b to Blender. I’ve been goofing around with it on and off for a few years now, and used it for a couple presentations in one of my university classes. Nothing really big, and I wouldn’t call myself even an intermediate user, but I can generally find my way around.
What I’m trying to do now is model an interior scene and load it into a game engine. Torque 3D via Collada/DAE format, if it matters. Most of my mapping experience has been in Radiant, and while I theoretically could use that with T3D, I think that would be a bad choice for this project and want to work with something more flexible. The main thing I’d like about using Radiant, however, is that just load a texture from a folder, and apply it to as many surfaces as I want, in as many maps/objects as I want. Using the materials in Blender, I can do the same thing. I can just load a texture from a file and apply it wherever. I haven’t done a lot of exporting, however - Most of my projects just stay in Blender itself. Can I do something similar to this when exporting an object? That is, can I texture objects from common image files without having to have a UVmapped ‘skin’ made specifically for it?
Well, I´m no expert in video game creation, but I gather you should use “power of two” textures (256x256, 512x512, 1024x102). I wont get technical, but it will help your game performance.
UVMapping makes texturing to that sizes easier, and can prevent you from using too many materials. I suggest you give it a go, it´s kinda funny once you get to it.
Not quite what I’m looking for, but thanks. Looking at my post, I wasn’t all that specific.
What I’m trying to do is model a structure or interior scene where I can apply a common, ‘universal’ texture to it, such as this:
As opposed to a mesh-specific texture such as this (Not an building/interior, but I think it illustrates what I mean):
That second one obviously isn’t going to work with a mesh besides the one it was specifically made for. The idea is to be able to share a common texture with other objects and cut down on how much I have in memory.
I asked this on the Torque forums as well, and I think someone was able to point me in the right direction, but didn’t explain specifically how do to this using Blender.
It’s entirely possible to construct your levels/rooms just like you would a BSP map, and never having to worry about fancy unwrap jobs. Depending on your modeling app of choice, look to use planar mapping on your visible faces. This as you say, has the advantage of allowing a plethora of 3D models to share materials.
I’m not sure how I’d go about doing this. Can someone help out?
A quick and very simple example, in the latest version of Blender, but it works the same in older versions anyways.
You have a small and very simple corridor and want to apply a continuous rock texture that will be the same for both side of the corridor wall.
First in Edit Mode, you select the faces of both corridor walls.
Then your press U -> Unwrap (or in the menu Mesh -> UV Unwrap -> Unwrap)
In the UV Editor panel, you’ll see with your seamless/tiled rock texture loaded :
Move both walls UV so they correspond in a single position :
Rescale those UV so the height of your walls take the texture height :
In texture view :
Now give the wall their own material and load the rock texture for this material (you can load a normal map for it if you want, and in the end you have
But you want to refer to the manual if you never used Blender, it’s not hard but finding where the options/buttons are when you’re new to it can be tricky as in every application you start to leard (the 2.49b one, as the 2.57 version regarding UV map is not yet ready unfortunately about UV and texturing, but finding 3rd party tutorial about it on google is easy as with the lively community there are hundred of Blender tutorial and videos)
It’s not recommended you normally make large things via models for game engines. Most game engines (not 100% about torque) treat models showing @ 100% when you see any part of them vs the BSP which is broken up by the engine/compiling. Plus you’ll still most likely need BSP to seal the level anyway.
What I would suggest (this is how it was done in Doom 3 & it actually works the same in ANY id engine based game) is make your basic structure in your game editor then export the level as an .obj file. then load the .obj in blender & make your custom environment models in Blender. Make your models based on the imported level and when you export your models from blender they’ll be in the same place in relation to the world. Depending on the lighting system of the engine you may need to tweak the origin on the models.
