Page 3



In the previous step you separated each face of the box into its own section on the Edit UVW screen. This will allow us to arrange it so that when we paint the texture we can easily paint all the faces with no stretching or overlapping.

However the random places we dragged each face to is not neccesarily ideal - unless you happened to be extremely good at this.

There are several important considerations when making a layout - this is not the place to go into them in extreme depth but I will just give a list so you can be aware of them up front:

a) ease of use
b) space used vs space wasted
e) stretching vs ease of use
f) overlapping or mirroring areas to save space


So keeping that in mind - for a box like this I'm going to suggest the following layout:

You'll notice I put these squares in such a way as the edges were touching and that all but one of them (the one that might be called the "back") are aligned as if you had sort of cut open a cardboard box and laid it out or unfolded it.

The main difference can be seen in this alternate example that I do not reccomend:



In the example above I have moved the "back" face to the top. This would be a more tradional layout if you were going to make a cardboard cut out and try to fold all the peices together to make an actual box.  This is not ideal for texture mapping though because you have wasted a lot of space that would be better sutied to giving you more texture detail.


To make this more apparent lets go ahead and scale the whole selection back down to fit inside the grey box that represents the area the texture will occupy.  Select the scale button as pointed to below:. Then select all the vertices - again as shown below with all of them highlited in red. Then while holding the mouse button down pull it slowly down and it will shrink until it is all inside the box.


So here you see, I've shrunk my selection. I used my judgement and stopped before it all fit inside the box - the reason being is I realized by eye judgement that it would probably fit inside if it just moved it ab it instead of  continuing to shrink it.



So a quick movement later - yes it fit just fine. Dont worry if the "vertices" go a teeny bit outside the lines. The vertices only represent the points where lines connect. They do not represent area that will be covered by your texture - only the area inside lines do that.




Ok so lets zoom back in  (magnifying glass in the bottom right) and get a closer look.

The main thing of not here is seen most clearly along the top edge to me.. youll notice the top line.. goes along to the second red dot - and then drops just a millimeter or two lower where it goes on level to the 3rd red dot.  This same problem occurs along the other rows as well. Lets go ahead and fix it.



First - go ahead and select on of the horizontal rows of vertices as seen by the red  line of vertices below.   Then from the scaling button click in the bottom right of the button where you see a small triangle in the bottom - this will expand further options for the button - you want to choose the scaler button I have highlighted and pointed to as seen below.

Next go ahead and scale the selection until the line is as flat as it can get. You will know if you are scaling it the wrong way because they will move farther apart.

The reason we are using the particular button I show is because it only scales along one axis instead of both.




So now we see two things - firstly the line that we had previously scaled is now prettydarn straight - and I have selected one of the vertical lines as well as showing you to use yet another one of the scaling buttons.

Once again - go ahead and scale it until the line is as straight as you can manage.

In fact now that your at it - why dont you go ahead and follow this procedure until all horizontal and vertical lines are as straight as possible!




Very good - your results should now be simliar to what you see below.

Now its time to go ahead and "fix" something we broke earlier.   Remember we kept choosing to "break selected vertices"  ?  Well go ahead and select all the vertices and choose the button I've outlined in yellow here the "Weld Selected" button.  This will go ahead and "connect the dots" - or basically weld all the vertices we have selected together.



Next we need to make ourselves a texture wireframe.  There are a lot BETTER ways to do this than what I'm going to show you here. However I want to use gmax as much as possible in case you do not have other tools available. Other tutorials may go into other methods in the future - but for now go ahead and take a screenshot.  You can do this in MS Windows systems by pressing the "Prt Scr" button up near the scroll lock and pause keys.  If you are on a Mac with OS X or higher use the "grab" program to take a screenshot.  

Now go into your favorite paint program. In this example I will use PaintShop Pro by Jasc software. You can download a shareware evaluation version for free at their website if you so wish.

Choose to paste as a new image. Most programs this is idential - choose from the "edit" menu along the top and then "paste as new image" is usually an option.

Now you will see a screen simliar to what I have below.

You need to go ahead now and use the selection tool (shown with the green outline on the left hand column) and drag a square selection just inside the grey box that shows the outline for the texture area.






Now from the "Image" menu above choose "Crop to selection"




And you should have an image very simliar to this:



Now its time to go ahead and finish up. Lets make a "material" in gmax that will put the skin onto our box - and then lets make a very simple exmaple texture or two to show our results.

In gmax along the top click on the material editor button as shown here in yellow:




Now lets do 3 things at once, click on item 1 - the "new" button.  

Then click on item 2 "standard"  

And then item 3 " OK"



You will now see a screen simliar to this:




Near the bottom is a "Maps" rollout as they like to call it.  Click on the plus and it will expand like so:



Again lets go ahead and do several things at once - note the right hand section will appear once you do step two:

1) click on diffuse color and put a check mark in the box
2) click where it says "none" along that line and youll get the box on the right
3) click on the "bitmap" icon to let it know your going to use a bitmap image
4) click the "OK" button


Now we get a new window asking us to select the "bitmap image" or basically the "skin"

As you see here I've shown you that when you click on an image name it will appear in the "file name" area as shown with highlight 1.

Then go ahead and choose the open button as shown with highlight number 2.




Here is the "skin" i created - the first of two examples.  This one is a special color and number coded skin to help us see what we've done. If  everything is OK then each side of the cube will have its own color and number on it.



So go ahead and then click on the button shown by highlight 1 - this is the "Show Map in Viewport" button. It will make it so that whatever texture you have selected will show up in the 3D editor windows IF and ONLY IF you have "smooth + highlights" when you right click on the name of  the viewport as you did earlier to choose "edged faces"  Heres a reminder image.




So now you have made a skin - and are showing it on your brand new box as seen here in a side by side comparison of the before and after boxes.




Finally as a bonus - I went ahead and made a "skin" to make this look like a dice - to show the more practical use of skinning a cube: