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Textureing Questions

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I have a couple of questions regarding texturing in gMax. 1. When doing large buildings I want to place a texture that is basically repeated over the length of the building...150 meters. The way I have done it is to break the building (box in gMax) into 10 sections. I then apply the texture to each section seperately using the Edit Mesh and Unwrap UVW modifiers. This works until I get the building in FS. Then, I can clearly see where the sections are. I've tried to make the textures look seemless in gMax, and they do, but not so in FS. Does anyone have a good method for doing this in gMax? I've also tried to make a box 1/10th the size of the building. I apply the texture to that box, and then I make an array of 150m or a little less so that the boxes overlap a little bit. This seems to work also, but once again, when I get into FS, it is clearly visible where the sections are. I want to texture so everything looks seemless in FS. Any help?2. I was also wondering about an opacity map. I followed a tuorial on creating trees for a progem called Trainz. I left out the program specific steps. I made a rectangle, applied a tree bmp as my diffuse and a black and white bmp (seperate file) for the opacity channel. Is this the correct way to add the alpha in gMax? Do I save the 2 files as 2 seperate DXTs in FS or do I combine the two files into one, and then save as DXT1?3. Night textures: I was under the impression that as along as you had an _LM file that matched the name of the texture you used as a day texture that FS would automatically use that _LM texture correctly at night? Is this correct? If not could someone tell me how to do both day and night textures?Thanks in advance!

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1. Did you do the tutorial for the space gun. If not, do it...it teaches how to make a texture repeat on a given object. 2.The use of the material editor in GMAX is difficult for me to speak to..the submaterials and naming conventions have confused me, and the style of modelling seems to be different than I'm accustomed to...it seems in gmax that makeing part of a material opaque is difficult? Perhaps modellers make sure that the transparent areas are seperate polygons, but I don't do that, my standard concept (which may have to change) is that we let the model be simple and let the textures do the work.What I have found is that I so far can be successful without using the gmax editor. I find that providing the texture has an alpha channel and there is NOT a _T suffix on the texture name, transparency results. Now this does mean that you can't have reflectivity AND transparency like this cuz they would both need the alpha channel, so there is a consequence to my approach.Night textures are also now muddled a bit by semantics and the gmax editor. We have "night map" and "light map" to consider now...The gmax sdk tries to explain these things, but again...I'm still working pretty hard to have my modelling work...so I like the simplicity offered by ignoring GMAX altogether....and using the light map texture like the old days, same file name with _lm suffixed to the name. This works fine as long as you check the box "night map" in the export options of makemdl.exe.Best,Bob B

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Bob,Thanks for your swift reply. Where is the space gun tutorial you are talking about. I though I downloaded all of the tutorials and I installed them in the tutorial folder, but nothing happened when I tried to view them. This was on a computer that has since crashed. So I don't have the tutorial here now. I will see what I can do.See ya,Tom

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I seem to remember this as one of the stock tutorials that came with GMAX...I'll check when I get home tonight.

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I got it figured out. I installed in a wrong directory last time, I think.But...do you happen to know where a certain gmaxMaterials.doc file is located. This file is mentioned in the Microsoft House gMax tutorial. It says to look for this file in the SDK but fails to mention which SDK. I looked in all the ones I have and didn't see it.Tom

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Hi Tom the effect that you are asking about in the above post is called "tiling" and yup it's easy to to and you do not have to sub divide you mesh to do it! First select the polly(s) that you want tomap your texture to then open the U.V. editor, select mapping then look along the right side for "u tile,v tile and w tile" enter the amount( number of times you want the texture to repeat and prestoit's done. Hope this is of some help

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Dan,Like Bob I too have been having a head scratching time with the texturing in GMAX. One problem I have been having is using more than one bitmap on an object i.e. one face has x.bmp a second face has y.bmp. What is a good method to do this. I tried the UV Unwrap but it tends to wrap the whole object in the second texture...ThanksShez


Shez Ansari

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Hi Shez sorry for not getting back to you a question or twowhat are you trying to model as there are many ways to map a texturein addition to "unwraping" like Mapping etc. On a "simple" object like a building you may not even have to unwrap at all. Just select the polly's apply the texture through "maping" part of the U.V editor and then use the gizmo to "resize" the the bit map so it "fits" your polly's in fact I rarely use the unrap on something as simple as a building at all only on something like say a human head or an aircraft. If you find you have to use the "unwrap" function on a building then it's often because the geometry I.E. the shape of your mesh is off. If your geometry is on the money your textures WILL map right with out a lot of playing around on a planar object as most buildings in fact are just "simple" planar objects. Hope this is of some help. P.S. if you need a little help with mapping look for me on Yahoo my I.D. is dan_martin 41

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