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I see. But, but... these islands are created somehow... I'm sure that it wasn't by volcanic activity below the ocean... so how did they rise??... hmm. Must be man-made islands with the use of ______ [fill in the blank] in the vertex model room by ______ [fill in the blank]. As you can see my mind is a blank slate waiting to be painted on. :)
Generally, each mesh in the vertex object will be an island. A whole mesh can be a single island, or it could be an archipelago of islands with bright blue shiny beaches (aka seams) set in a dark blue gridded sea . . . Arrr Jim lad!
(ahem. too much cheese before bed last night, I think!)
Basically, all the bits on the uv map are islands (it's called a map, right? So there is a kind of logic to it!)
Thanks, makes purrfect logic. Appears I need to become a seamstress/tailor. :)
Even the default UV map which Carrara assigns to an object is logical... Not until it is un-wrapped does it make a lot of sense and become and very readable... to myself... which is what I need to start learning how to do. I just watched a video on YouTube which, while very simple, explains it well... note that there are ones for Blender and other programs there also.
UV Mapping in Carrara 8.5 "an easy to follow example of UV Mapping and UnWrapping"
Now that I've come this far I'll want to take another look at these Carrara discussions... now that I understand this a wee bit.
UV Mapping and Unfold and practice, unfolding all kinds of shapes?
If anyone knows of other discussions or videos... let me know an I'll be sure to add them here on page 1... I've not stumbled upon any lately.
I always (but I'm no pro modeler like these other guys commenting!) make my own islands, so it's not something that's done automagically in Carrara.
It might come close when we unwrap... and even other operations... but when I'm making mine, in the UV Editor I always deselect Show All for domains, so that only my selected domain is selectable within the UV view.
Then I select the whole thing and go to the operations tab and "Detach Polygons", so that I can move this thing around without stretching the hidden parts of the mesh.. again, I'm talking about being within the UV Map screen on the right.
Now I drag that whole thing out of the grid area so I can work on it. I'm not very good with unwrapping yet, so I usually pick the closest operation to my shape, and use that projection to get it close, then I manipulate the edges from there.
I'll do that with each shading domain, and then scale them to fit within the grid as separate islands - getting them to fill as much of the space as possible.
When I was just talking about manipulating edges, I'll often find that I can use the planar projection which is goint to give me a fairly accurate map of that area, which will often shrink or hide some of the edges. So I select those edges using the mesh selection tool in the left modeler window - so I know exactly what I'm selecting - and then I stretch them out so I can see them plainly, and then I can manipulate them according to how I see they'll get the least distortion.
I know... not the most elegant way... but I've been pretty darned successful so far doing it that way.
I'll get the hand of unwrapping one of these days. I do know how... for the most part. But I think I must get my seems wrong or just don't understand some part of the process... I never seem to get things unwrapped how I'd like them to be.
I've often thought about joining Wendy in buying Ultimate Unwrap 3D Pro (at least I think that's what she uses), but I think that, if I'm messing up in Carrara's, I'm just missing something simple - and that would be reflected in anything that I try using.
Another option that just occurred to me, thanks to this thread and Fifth Element (I think it was Fifth... but I cannot seem to find the post to be sure, Hmmm) is that Blender has an excellent UV Unwrapping tool... I may just try that.
But when I feel like getting better at UV Mapping (too busy to mess with it right now) I'm planning on watching PhilW's lessons in Advanced Carrara Techniques and follow those examples through - which should get me working just fine within good ol' Carrara!
Carrara's UV Editor can be quite finicky, but it gets easier with practice. For example, when we try to do something and the slightest nudge flies way far away, try zooming in the view as much as you can and still view the whole area you need to work in - and it gets better. The closer we get to the edge to be moved, the easier it is to be accurate.
I've also been feeling a lot more comfortable after I started dragging my separate domains away from the grid. Then I can move my view over there and work without messing other things up. When I'm all done I scale everything (individually) to what they should be, and fit them into the grid once again.
I actually even enjoy working with UVs in Carrara.
Hmmm... back before I knew how to work with 3D models, I used to make custom texture for them.
So a pal had me try his 3DS Max computer, which had some plugin for Unwrapping and such. I used that to adjust his meshes to align just right with my texture maps - and it was really fun.
In Carrara I haven't been doing that - but I've recently discovered that I can. All I have to do is to load the map into the vertex object's shader and it shows up in UV Edit mode. I've always been doing my modeling and mapping prior to even having a texture made. I'll have to think back to those old days and try foreseeing how I'll need my map to be, make a map, and apply it to my objects. Even if it needs tweaking later, it'll make UV Editing that much more fun!
With that Max plugin, the grid is never-ending. So I could drag individual islands out of the main grid into the next one over, and align it to the map over in that grid area - because each grid area corresponded to the image map - and each grid beyond the main grid had the map in it as well... making things really easy.
Hmmm... didn't someone say they wanted ideas for plugins?
See full post above for more tips and helful stuff. A must read for anyone.
Goodness gracias... all you tips are very apprecialted... pro-modeler that you are'nt. :) Anyone seeing my questions, renders or simple mini-tutorials can easily tell that I'm certainly no pro. This thread is for everyone... from a beginner to a Pro or anywhere inbetween. Note that even the Pros are constantly stumbling upon new ways to do things. Learning is neverending.
Suppose it would which is why, even though I have a standalone UV-Unwrap as well as Blender, I'd rather do it correctly in Carrara first.
Fifth Element commented on the previous page right after diomede posted his problem which needed un-wrapping. Which I also run into sometimes... too often actually.
Gosh I'd watched that video once and haven't been back yet... figured that I'd better finish the final chapter of PhilW's Carrara 8.5 Tutorial Video first.
I do have one question... What did you mean by fins below?
What makes Carrara so cool..., I've read Carrara Rocks! somewhere,... is the fact that there are are so many forks in the road of the many rooms, more in each room... then even more in nearly any feature. Often a fork in the road can lead us into a whole new universe... waay cool.
[ below is from his next post]
[cut by wgdjohn]
Correct me if I am wrong here.... I would first set up the shader with said map in the shader room first... and then load it into a shading domain in the vertex room... then open the UV window and whalla... it is there... right? Me gotta learn all this. :)
Something that occurs to me is that I could simply save out some simple colors of various colors to represent each island or even seperate polys of an island and have them show up if I wanted more more colors... but the latter would be diving a bit too deep perhaps.
Just been making an apple. Basically a sphere, right? Easy to map, right?
Ha!
I spent ages making a nice seamless apple texture (it was really difficult, mostly because I had to stop myself from eating the apple before I was happy with the texture!). My first instinct was to add a seam and unwrap it,but that produced a bit of a mess that would take a lot of time to straighten out. So I selected spherical mapping and it very nearly worked.
There's a big problem whith spherical (and cylindrical) mapping that, for me anyway, makes it kinda useless. It maps out all the segments around the sphere in a nice regular grid, until it gets to the last one. This one it wraps back to the beginning, squeezing the entire texture sheet into that one segment (see pic 1)
I've highlighted that problem segment in the UV view, so you can see what's happening. (BTW, I tried the same unwrap in Modo, and that has the same problem. Haven't tried it in UV Mapper Pro though.) If you're only building the prop for a render, you can hide it from the camera, so you'll probably be okay, but it's not something I'd want to distribute.
Oh, and to see the texture in the UV editor, firstly set up your textures and shaders, then go to the Display tab in the UV editor and set the Display mode. If you have more than one domain, pick the one you want to see from the shading domains list. As they say, et voilà!
(BTW, you can also see the stalk is mapped as its own little island)
Aha! Fixed it for you!
That's what I get for doing so much UV editing by hand, I guess.
So, I've created the same issue as above - just using a simply Vertex Sphere and used Custom UVs and went to Operations and used a Spherical projection to create the map.
Same problem as TangoAlpha above.
In Operations tab, I Detached Polygons, after which I carefully grabbed one of the vertices and moved the whole thing off the grid to the left, like so (Bottom Left)
I scaled it way down to match the size of the rest of the polygons. By making a few selections, I could tell that the polygons were backwards, if I was to simply press them up next to the rest of the mapped polys, so I scaled it down until it flipped side-by-side, and continued until I got the proper width.
Then it was a simply matter of matching the little row up with the side of the others, which was really easy because when I have them selected, the points I needed to match up to had a ghostly glow to them, meaning that they belonged to something that was selected, and from my selections before, I knew that the side I was about to match up to them was the proper set of vertices! Cool, eh?
One thing left was to select the end vertices (top and bottom, separately) and match them up with the other center-point vertices. I'm not sure why Carrara puts those off to one side like that, but it's those center points that are the only thing wrong with this UV mapping, as you can see in the image. I rotated this thing all around - shooting renders to make sure that the working view wasn't playing with my eyes... perfect - except for the very tips of the poles.
Hope this helps ;)
Here's a highlight of the vertices after I've fixed them in the UV map
Ah, detach polys! Now why didn't I think of that!
Because you were busy think about something else? ;)
Oh, and wgdjohn, I've corrected my mis-spelling from fins to find ;)
Should make a little more sense now... maybe? A little?
Yeah . . . putting the apples back on the tree (Carrara tree, that is!)
But on your way, you accidentally ate them all? LOL
A few of my crazy Mapping/Un-Mapping questions and wandering thoughts.
As you can see I'm a blank canvas waiting to be painter on... an empty scene waiting for content to be added.
Reserving some time to read the pdf manual as well as PhilW's videos on this subject.
I could be wrong, but I don't think procedural-only shaders will show at all. Again, I could be wrong. I think that we need an image map in the Color channel for it to show.
There weren't any because these were ony the lateral edges 'between' the grid pattern seen everywhere else - hense the problem: It looks incredibly stretched in those particular polygons - being mostly square, but stretched across the whole grid of the map. So that's why I detached them, pulled them away, and scaled them down - back to being square.
Absolutely. Like anything else - perhaps even more so - we need to practice before feeling anything that resembles comfort.
I didn't answer the snap-to-grid because I don't know the answer to that one... sorry.
No. The UV editing tools are incredibly basic.
Don't do that!
You probably clicked on Unwrap after. Unwrap'll do that, until you've added in some seams etc. The detach as Dart describes works best if you keep the default spherical mapping (you'll need to Undo - cmd/ctrl-z - since if you reapply spherical mapping, you'll have to do the detach again.)
I'm this >-< close to understanding what you did. I can see the problem clearly in the upper right of the composite pic.. a gap between the left vertical edge and the horizontal lines. Moving on to the lower detached polys... I would guess that I could just drag select all the points except the very top point and very bottom point and simply shift them to the left? Oh gosh this is making me dizzy trying to figure out... No that's not right... or is it... you said said you "scaled them down"... hmm... what I need to do is be presented with the problem and then fiddle with it until finally figuring out what you did to fix it.
Hey Dart, you have sooo much spare time... why don't you make a video tutorial on UV Mapping and Fixing problems. :)
Tonight I took a good step into learning UV Mapping and UnWrapping this by watching Advanced Carrara Techniques - by PhilW once again. Helped a lot since I'm much further along. Took me a few steps forward now that I know more about modeling and a tiny bit about UV Mapping/UnWrapping which is also mentioned in his Modeling section as well in it's own section.
I also completed the final section/disk of Carrara 8.5 Tutorial Video - by PhilW - about 3D paint which it seems I had watched before... it always helps to watch all Phil Wilkes videos over an over every so often. Like watching any good complicated Movie you always pick up more details in seeing them repeatedly.
Thanks for the kind words. UV mapping in Carrara is still a bit of an art rather than a science.but the more you do, the more it starts to fall into place. It is certainly an area which could be improved and updated, but I wouldn't hold your breath for that, we have what we have (or you find an alternative!).
After you detach the polys, you'll have something that looks like a very wide ladder selected. Move it off the grid so you can work on it in isolation. (Don't click anywhere else or you'll lose the selection!) Then you can scale it so it's only as wide as all the other polys in your object. Job nearly done. You'll need to flip it horizontally, since it's a mirror image, so select the left edge and drag it beyond the right edge (or select the right edge and drag it beyond the left edge). You'll also need to adjyst the top and bottom point to make neat little triangles. Now you can fit it to the right or left edge (it doesn't really matter) of the main object, taking care to get the points coincident. Finally double click the whole lot and scale it to fit inside the UV grid.
NB. For a "ladder" like that, rather than scaling it initially, it's probably easier just to select one side and drag it in. You can then scale and flip all in one motion.
Thanks,
Took me a bit to figure out how to move the detached polys so I added some text to the included pic. Seems like I did a fair job... Ok class dismissed... hope I don't flunk.
John's Crazy Objects
Been playing with Deform in the vertex model room. For this I used Model/Deform/Bend and Twist and only applied Bend with the amount set at 345° on a cube which I duplicated to = 6 in all. "Just wait a minute John. Why don't you start from the begriming?" Ok... ok. Below are the steps.
"So tell us John what this thing is and where you plan to use it."
I have absolutely no idea what it is... looks sorta like a wheel or a gear like thing. I can see many many more ways to use deform now... I think perhaps I'll make some changes to the cubes... perhaps attach their lower polys so that the entire thing is one single polymesh instead of 6 cubes. Don't be surprised if something like it appears in one of the future Carrara Challenges. Oh Gosh... I need to go decide on who is the best in the current Challenge. "Hah... good luck with that."
Could be a drill bit, especially if you then angle the top of each section.
Nice use of deform.
After a bad fire in Toonville, my Toons requested a fire truck to help put out any future fires, so I am currently working on one for them. It will incorporate the knowledge I gained making the pipe sections above and will have nobby tires to help cover rough terrain (I don't have good roads yet - a future project).
The tires are done in the Vertex room. Create a circle and a small box witth 4 points per side that is then swept along the path. For some reason, there is a deformed section in the resulting donut, so I copied and pasted it then rotated 180 degrees. Select and delete the bad half from each donut then align and weld. A little reshaping and the tire is almost done. Selected the middle region of the flat outer tread and the Loop and the Plus sign to sleect the other two rings. Extruded slightly without linking polygons to create the nobs. For my toons, this is good enough. The hub caps are done with the pipe method I discussed above. Also made flat version. Can scale the tires as needed by each particular vehicle.
I would rreally love to be able to have the front wheels turn together. Any way I can do that? I have ERC from Fenric but havve never figured out how to use it.
Gee Thanks. A drill bit of course... could even throw in some twist... ohhhh the possibilities.
Modeling in Carrara is funnnnn!
It depends on the result. In my example, I had to scale my detached polygons backwards to flip the left edge to the right, or that column of polygons would go backwards against the shader.
Take another look at this image
In order for the left vertical edge to match up correctly it must, by the time we're done, remain where it is. So what truly needs to be done is to drag the right vertical edge leftwards to the appropriate spacing beyond that left vertical edge, right?
However, trying to do that ends up trashing everything attached. Because everything is attached!!!
So I just selected the polygons in question - as in the image - and "Detached Polygons" and dragged that whole selection to the left, out of the grid area so I can work with it. That's also a good test to make sure it's truly detached - nothing else coming along for the ride.
That is shown in the bottom left of the image.
The nice part about having that whole thing outside the grid allows me to select parts of it by drag-selecting, without picking up anything else either nearby or undeneath my selection.
So when I drag-select the right-most vertical edge of those newly detached ploygons, the far right of the original map glow lightly, showing that the selection shares those vertices. Likewise, if I select the vertical edge of the left side, the left vertical edge vertices of the original mapping glows the same way.
So this means that the whole thing (Newly detached Polygons) not only needs to be rescaled horizontally, it needs to be flipped horizontally as well.
Luckily, I remembered that (I think it was PhilW who demonstrated this in Advanced Techniques) by scaling beyond making them flat will flip them backwards - something that we must usually be mindful to avoid doing. But in this case, it's exactly what needs to be done.
So now it's a matter of matching up the right vertical edge of the tweaked mapping with the left vertical edge of the original - being sure that the vertices match up as closely as we can get them. Also we need to then select the north pole vertex and drag it directly over the original north pole, which will be glowing when we select the modified north pole - making the process fairly simple. Then repeat that with the south pole.
But those (yellowish) markings are the same selection as the original selection from when I detached the ploygons - if that makes any sense.
In essence, we always have to think through what has to match up with what. If we know what part of the mesh has to line up with what part of the map, we shall always prevail eventually. But this was an incredibly simple example - yet it's this type of work that help us to understand to whole of UV Mapping!
Yes, it can be a PITA. But it can also be very rewarding.
It's important to constantly UV Map our models as soon as we get to a certain stage in the modeling process for two important reasons:
It's also important to UV map our models before we duplicate them, otherwise wer'e just creating a whole bunch of extra work. (thinking of things like those tyres above...)
True Dat!
Did you ever forget? Sure you have... otherwise you likely wouldn't have said it! LOL
Personally, I can't count how many times I did that! The cool part is that Carrara makes duplication such an fun and easy task. Just delete all the duplicates, perform UV Mapping, get it shaded, start over with duplicates! LOL
Great point, Tim!
Yes, ERC would be a good example of how this is used. Choose one of the wheels as the "Master" and one as the slave. Apply ERC to the slave and have it inherit the rotations from the Master, and then when you turn the Master, the Slave should follow along (can't give more precise instructions as I am rendering something, but let me know if you get stuck.)
Just a little addition now that I can try it:
- ERC only works when rotations are set to Angles, and Quaternion is the default so you will need to change this;
- There are Basic and Advanced settings but for this you only need Basic. Do not check the FRA option, but the rest should be pretty self explanatory.