texturing using empty

Support Materials and Textures
#1

Hi,

I’ve tried to follow the tutorial by Nick Towers using empties to position a texture.
See link http://pages.zoom.co.uk/nick.towers/…_tutorial.html

This is what i did:
Used the eye texture he delivered and placed it on a sphere in front view.
Everything is going well …but…

If i rotate the camera around the sphere the texture shows up twice:
One in front view but it also appears on the “back” of the spere as a mirror image.
Which setting did i miss here?
Because i expected it to only appear on the front side of the sphere.

Hope i make any sense and thanks for any answers!

Cheerio!

#2

It sounds about right for that type of texture. The way I get around it is by assigning a material group to the vertecies at the front of the eyeball that make up the iris and pupil and uv map the iris texture to that!

Um… that assumes a fair amount of texturing experience. Feel free to ask for a clarification!

Hang on… I just looked at the tutorial… I suspect that the pont is that the image is only taken from the front, so the texture won’t be seen!

If you want to use the back of the model, you should UV map the texture to the model.

Edit: One other observation, the girl’s hair in the tutorial probably covers the extraneous eyeballs at the back!

#3

Try selecting “ClipCube” instead of “Clip” on the Image tab in the texture buttons. This may be an oversight in the tutorial, or Ammusionist may be right that this image is intended to be viewed from the front or covered by hair or a hat. But ClipCube should do what you want it to do. It basically restricts the texture’s influence to within a cube shape around the image, so you should be able to control which sufraces the texture appears on by moving the empty around.

#4

Hey, that’s a gret tip Bugman. Didn’t know about Clip Cube!

Learning something new about Blender every day!!! (ish)

#5

Yes, I had that problem before. You need to do ClipCube.

However, if the object is thin, you have to re-scale the Z axis of the empty so it is shorter than the thickness of the object.

I use this technique all the time when I do Blender meshes of a military vehicle or something that is also found in the form of a plastic model. The empty technique simulates applying a waterslide decal to a plastic model.

#6

Thanks all for the replies.

Bugman_2000:
ClipCube works indeed, so that solves the problem.

Ammusionist:
UV-mapping is the next big thing i have to dive in…might come back to you on that part :slight_smile:

Nyrathwiz:
rescaling the z-axis is one thing that i will keep in mind for the future thanks!