Texturing and finding good materials.

Artwork Works in Progress
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I’ve spent most of the day trying to find a good beginner tutorial to texturing, but most of the ones I’ve found ASSUME things about the proficency of the user that they shouldn’t. >.<;; It’s making me nuts. I’ve just finished a lyre, which I made by using extrude, which I found out how to do from the “make a castle” tutorial, but when it comes to the other things like UV mapping people assume far too much.

For example, I found one where the guy assumed you’d already made the texture for the object in question. O.o;; Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of a tutorial?

So I need a beginner, beginner tutorial. I don’t care how long it is as long as it’s detailed, with things like hit this or that key and go to the bottom of the screen, instead of “Make a mesh object” where upon I ask WHERE… --;; (Also go to this or that window… you know how many windows this program has? I have no idea where to find them…)

To the people making tutorials, please, please never assume any kind of proficency on the part of the user! All of the Photoshop tutorials, even the high end ones don’t. They tell you EXACTLY what to do, and WHERE to find it with UI images. --;;;;;;; It’s called a Tutorial for a reason, the person doesn’t KNOW anything. Sorry… frustrated. (I spent about 6 hours trying to find a sufficent tutorial). The only reason I understood the castle one was because the person broke it down to key strokes, and gave a general overview of what each step was about. The general rule is the more detail is more important than scrolling with tutorials, (FAQs, etc). As Blender has not updated their documentation/user manual to a current one, it makes it near to impossible to find anything.

Anyway, I’m in the middle of making a Lyre… I would love it if I could finish it, by taking a decent tutorial that told where every single last window was and how to get there. Any suggestions?

is where the unfinished lyre is. That’s a screen capture. I’m debating about making a base and putting the knobs at the end…

I tried to put it into UVMapper, as an obj, but the meshes didn’t show up and there are no tutorials to explain how to do that. >.<;; Do I ask for too much? Wite tutorials as if you were writing them for dumbies.

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Part of the issue is that “texturing” really isn’t a modelling issue. It’s beyond the scope of what blender does. Creating the images you apply to the mesh is a much more “traditional” art and requires the use of different programs. Can’t really fault blender documentation for not discussing it.

Most of what I know about creating images (which isn’t a whole ton, mind you) is the result of months of tinkering in photoshop discovering on my own how to generate specific effects. There are some tutorials out there, but they’re few and far between.

Specific to blender, applying the texture to the mesh is both simple and hard.

First bring up the UV/Image Editor, which you select by pressing the menu button at the bottom left corner of a frame. Then select the object you want to texture in another frame. Then, n the drop down box at the bottom of the frame, change the selection from ‘object mode’ to ‘uv face select’. The object should turn completely pink, as switching to uv face select by default selects all faces. If you want to edit the faces that you texture, unselect everything then re-select only the faces you want.

Finally, go back to the UV/Image Editor window and press ‘E’. This unwraps the object (translates all the selected faces to a 2d representation) so you can drag vertices around on your texture. This process is what “textures” the object.

To see your texture, click on the ‘Image’ menu at the bottom of the UV/Image Editor frame. It gives you the option to open a file, browse to the texture you created and open it. It will appear in place of the grid in the UV/Image Editor.

The process of texturing is extremely time consuming, don’t be surprised if your first few projects take you hours just to get anywhere. You will improve, slowly.

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Well, hopefully somebody someday will have the time to pound out an all-inclusive tute an texturing, until then…
I’ve learned how to use Blender and model and UV map with what’s available and so have most of the others here. That said, there is a reason we have these forums, no? :slight_smile:

Ok, first and foremost, documentation:
Blender Documentation

Look down through that list and you will see a bunch on materials and texturing and UV mapping. I recommned starting from the top, especially since you are new, so that you can get a feel for how to actually use Blender.

As for texturing here is a great site for good concepts on texturing.
http://www.onona3d.com/index.htm it’s not specific to blender, but once you know the program (which you will if you read the documentation) you should be able to translate how to do it in blender.

Hop that helps!

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Hell, if I figure it out, then I’LL make the tutorial. >.<;;

Soter- I tried the Documentation, and tried to follow it but it’s out of date, and when I tried to do as it said nothing happened… O.o;;; Thanks for the second link though.

xzzy- Thanks to you too. I’ll try that as well.

My main problem at the moment with texturing is that for some reason I can’t see the mesh when I export it as a wavefront object and then put it in UV Mapper… UV mapper reads that there is nothing there in the file. (But they open up in Poser just fine.) THEN I could make the textures for the lyre with a mesh map to work with, and then compile it back into Blender, which would make my life easier… if I could figure out how to do that.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Thanks for the help so far!

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Hitsuji , take a look at this tutorial. It may answer a lot of questions. For one, you can easily use PaintShop for your textures.

Tutorial…
http://free.hostdepartment.com/B/Blender3D/UVmap/

:smiley:

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Thanks blinks God! I got it to WORK … next step painting and loading the texture. Just a stupid question, I guess you could say… but I was wondering if it matters if my object is you know rounded. It’s simple with a cube, yes, but does it matter on a rounded surface?

<–painting it gold with spuerblade pro anyhow, just curious.

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Your object can be any shape!

You just need to create some SEAMs to unwrap it properly. If you look in the right place in Blender, you’ll find a UV section where there are few extra options to unwrap your object, including a sphere. So instead of pressing the “U” key, you can click one of those buttons, for possibly better results.

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you could also try the following video tutorial:
http://blender.org/cms/Model_Material_Light.397.0.html

Check the LSCM UV Mapping one.

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^^;; It kind of crashed my compie, but thank you anyhow.

I’m going to test the texture I made today. Thanks everyone.

Yay! It worked, rinse and repeat and I’ll have this thing done yet! I’ll post the finished render.