UV Mapping

Now that we got our selves a nice torpedo model, we will work with the skin process, to let the torpedo more presentable to a game. This process will make you even more expert to manage the Views, and understand exactly what we can do on each one, to speed up our work. Plus, we´ll see more features on the toolbar that really worths the try.

Taking a picture of the model

1 Don´t ask about the title yet, i ´ll explain to you later. 1.1 Open the MED Application. 1.2 Open the model you´ve just finished in the Modeling Section, or you can get our finished model in the ...//. 1.3 Save the file with a different name, so we can get two, one with the skin and one without it. Choose the path for your folder, you can name the file Torp_skin_map.mdl , in the file type, choose .mdl5.

2 We will hide the propeller part so we can work only with the body for now. 2.1 With the Triangle Mode turned on, Select with Left-Click and Drag to make a green square around the propeller, and release to make the selection.

2.2 With it still selected, Click the Hide Selected button to make it invisible to us, and with the same procedure as before, select the part that remains, the body part.

2.3 Now click View/Skins to open the Skin Editor, first of all we only see a black rectangle, which is where our skin will be and the 3D View on the right, to work directly with the model. 2.4 Click Edit/Resize Skin ..., and in the Resize Skin window, type 528 in the New Skin Width and New Skin Height. Leave adapt skin points on, i´ll explain later, now click OK to close.

2.5 Now we just resized the rectangle to get enough room to work. 2.6 Click Edit/Create MD2 Mapping, choose Front, if not already on, with 90 on the Tolerance Field, and Mirror Reverse Side turned off, and click OK.

3 Here is where i mean about taking pictures. The black rectangle is where will be our image, the triangles that we see is just one side of the model, and everything we do here, like scaling and moving will not affect the model back there. So, we can make our skin image, with no worry. The only thing that will be affecting, is the skin of the model, which right now is none. If you wanna check if is really true, there is a nice feature that do just that, minimize the Skin Editor, and back in the MED, click Options/3D Views/Texture Mapped, and now the model will turn black in the 3D View, because there is no skin assigned to the model yet. 3.1 Back in the Skin Editor, Select everything, and Move it down until the bottom edge of the black empty skin, so we can make space for the other pictures that we are going to take later.

4 Go back to the MED and Select the whole body part again, and in the Skin Editor, click Edit/Create MD2 Mapping, but now choose Back, and click OK. We now have a nice picture of the back face of the model. Just like what the image shows below: 4.1 Move this one down to near the top of the other. Make sure you don´t overlap anything.

5 Back in the MED, click Show All, so we can see the whole model again 5.1 Choose one of the three propellers, and Select three outside faces, each face is made by two triangles, which means we need to select 6 triangles.Be careful to not select any triangles in the back. Follow the image below to help you. 5.2 Now, probably your model will be positioned with something like the image below. But we can take a picture for the Skin Editor, because we can´t tell exactly what position we want. Is it Front, Back? To resolve this, we need to rotate the faces to align them exactly with the vertical cross, the one in 90 degrees. But if we do this now, we will rotate only the selected faces, and our model will become a complete mess.

Top | 3D | Side

5.3 To fix this, remember exactly where are the selected faces on the Side view. Then Select everything, and Rotate until you get these faces aligned with the vertical cross. Now we´ll be able to take a nice picture from the Top:

Top | 3D | Side

5.4 Go to the Skin Editor and click Edit/Create MD2 Mapping, choose Top and click OK. 5.5 Now you can Move and Rotate, positioning to just like what the image shows:

5.6 Now with it still selected, click Hide Selected button, and you will be able to see in MED, what are the faces that we need to take the picture too, and don´t forget to select the whole thing again when rotating it to align with the vertical cross. 5.7 Since this depends pretty much on what you ´ve done so far with the model, i mean, yours will probably be different from my own. You will just have to come back to the steps 5.3 to 5.5 and do the same things with the others, and don´t forget, if you select what you´ve been done so far in the Skin Editor, you will see exactly the same selection in MED. I puted three images below to ilustrate this.

Top | 3D | Side

5.7.1 If you select everything here in the Skin Editor.

5.7.2 You will be able to see the same selection back in MED.

Top | 3D | Side

6 Now that you´ve finished with these three parts of the propeller, we´ll work with three other parts. The inside parts, that is placed between each two propellers. Like what the image shows: Don´t forget to select everything when rotating to align exactly with the vertical cross, and take always the Top picture in the Create MD2 Mapping. Just like we did before.

Top | 3D | Side

6.1 Selecting them in the Skin Editor to find the one that still missing:

7 We have to finish with the remaining parts of the propeller now. You will need to select three faces of propeller´s back. 7.1 Select exactly like this image below. After you select, you may notice that it can be really difficult to decide on what View to choose in the Skin Editor. Again, don´t you worry, because we have a nice button feature to resolve this problem. 7.2 Click the Flip Normals button, and see what it does.

Top | 3D | Side

7.3 What the Flip Normals did, is just like rotating something about 180 degrees, giving it a complete turn, but without leaving the position. 7.4 Now, you just have to go in the Skin Editor and Edit/Create MD2 Mapping, but now we will choose Left, because is the Side View that we want a picture now, then click OK.

Top | 3D | Side

7.5 This is the result in the Skin Editor, with a Flip Normals feature to accomplish:

7.6 As you can see from here, back in MED and without anything selected, just click a blank space to deselect . We can notice that the part we were using, it is missing now, actually is still there but we would have to be inside the torpedo to see it, try if you want to see how it works, or just select the part that is missing in the Skin Editor and in MED Click Flip Normals button, to flip it back again to its normal facing position.

8 The next step is to, Select only the propellers part, like what the image is showing:

Top | 3D | Side

8.1 Click Hide Selected now to give us more visibility to work on.

Top | 3D | Front

8.2 Select the back faces from the body as you see from the image. Click Flip Normals again to red highlight in the side view.

Top | 3D | Side

8.3 Now you can take one more picture of the back face of the body. Just use the same procedure as before, go to Skin Editor and Edit/Create MD2 Mapping, choose Left, then click OK.

9 Now that we have enough pictures of the model´s face. We can rearrange them bringing them up to fit exactly in the black empty skin.

9.1 This is what i came up with, after pushing them up like the image below. Don´t need to be exactly as this image, and leave enough space to select each one. After that, just resize the skin to fit with all the faces, click Edit/Resize Skin ...and try some numbers until you get satisfied, but just remember that it needs to be in the power of 2 . And try using the adapt skin points turned on, to see what it does. It just resizes the black empty skin affecting all the faces together, otherwise would affect only the black empty skin. If you get not satisfied, just Click Undo to get back to normal or resize them with the previous size, and with the adapt skin points turned on, so you can get it back to normal. 9.2 Export your image so you can start painting over it. File/Export/Current Image to BMP..., save it with the name and path you want. 9.3 To paint over, you can use any image editor available in the market, i.e. PhotoShop® from Adobe©, and there are some free too, like Paint® in Windows® system and Gimp in Linux system. 9.3.1 Be aware to use 24 bit RGB when painting to avoid hassles with the MED palette.

If you think about it, it looks pretty much like my own sketchs in the Introduction section, its the same as drawing a model with lines by hand. Well, its only another way to see it. But still, with more detailed models we will need this feature.

Skin it

1 If it´s all closed. Open MED and Skin Editor with the previous model or get it in ...//AY_work_files/torpedo_model/torpedo_uvmap.mdl, and if in the Skin Editor you can´t see the triangles faces, just click Triangles Mode to turn it on. 1.1 Go to File/Import/Skin Image... and search for the painted skin, if you didn´t make it, you can get the image ready in ...//AY_work_files/torpedo_model/Torpedo_skin.bmp. 1.2 Using the Select button, you can start to Move, Rotate and Scale, each triangles face over each respective skin, like the image below, until it suits your needs.Couldn´t be easier. 1.3 You can see the results while you are moving the faces, using the Position button in the 3D View on the right.

1.4 As you can see in our last image, this skin makes our torpedo with a nice smile, but it seems more like a snake or a happy toothless shark. Somethings that could resolve this, is to bring the teeths more to front. But, we would really need to move some inside faces that are hidden near to the mouth, and probably "take a picture from the head´s face (the sphere part)" separately from the rest of the body, just like the propeller part, and we would need the Vertex Mode in the Skin Editor to manipulate each point more precisely, since this tutorial is intended for the A6 Trial version users too, i decided to leave that way. We will mostly see the model in action from the back, anyway. Beside, is a good way to you see some problems that can come up when making your skins, and if it´s the case, consider on making an upgrade, to be able to deal with such problems.

Now we are done with the model. We could have detailed a lot more, but the scope here was to make enough shape to looks like a torpedo, without using many faces, as the model becomes heavy, wich is not good for just a torpedo. Besides, it was well disguised with the skin.

If you experienced some problems along the process and didn´t finished this UV Mapping or just wants to have a finished one. You can get it in ...//AY_work_files/torpedo_model/torpedo_skin.mdl

Go To:
Introduction Level Design Low Poly Modeling UV Mapping Submarine Interface Submarine Simulation

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