General Question Texture stretched out

[IronRain]

Hi everyone,

Currently I'm practicing on making textures but I've ran into a problem. Every time I create a texture it's all stretched out once I apply it on the vehicle. This is what I do:

1: Create a model
2: Create a texture template with UVMapper (size=256x256)
3: In Photoshop create a texture within the lines of the map
4: save the texture (both .bmp and .dds) and apply the texture in Anim8or
5: Already knowing that it will be stretched, load everything in Orbiter and guess what.. stretched.

What am I doing wrong here? Shouldn't I make a texture template and just make a texture that fits within 256x256 and apply it with MeshWizard's slide texturing?

Thanks in advance!

IronRain

 

[orb]

Can you post a screenshot from Orbiter and the texture (converted to JPEG; can be rescaled down)?

 

[PhantomCruiser]

It took me a lot of trial and error (judicious use of the undo button) but this is what I did for my project...



With cut and paste I was able to move it around and get the letter height that I wanted, and the fixed the colors and 'rivet' placement as I desired. the second stage is much shorter, and the graphic is so out of shape that it's unrecognizable when seen as 256X256.

 

[IronRain]

Can you post a screenshot from Orbiter and the texture (converted to JPEG; can be rescaled down)?

I had to make a new one because my PC is working against me atm, but the idea is the same

The texture in paint.net (Photoshop has stopped working..)

'Rockot' on the first stage

Roscosmos picture also stretched out

Sorry that it's this simple, again, I had to make a new one..

 

[IronRain]

It took me a lot of trial and error (judicious use of the undo button) but this is what I did for my project...



With cut and paste I was able to move it around and get the letter height that I wanted, and the fixed the colors and 'rivet' placement as I desired. the second stage is much shorter, and the graphic is so out of shape that it's unrecognizable when seen as 256X256.

Are you using texture maps? It seems that you just use the whole space?

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Hey, come to think of it, for the Athena III I was working on... It has a 2 1/2 segment SRB for it's 1st stage. I made it using 2 segements that were the same size, and textured them seperately. It was much easier to line up the graphics with a shorter cylinder to work with.

 

[Coolhand]

I don't think there's anything wrong, its just doing what it does... if you apply a square texture, to a non-square projection (if you unfolded that mesh as if a paper model you'd end up with a rectangle)

so essentially there are 2 ways to fix this

1, dont use the entire texture - paint in a region that matches the shape of the unfolded rocket / cylinder - spare regions can be used for other areas of your mesh - this requires uv editing to re-arrange your projections but it gives reliable results.

(often when UV mapping, a square checker map is temporarily applied to make sure that the map coordinates (UV's) have a 1:1 aspect ratio, as long as the squares of the checker appear as squares, or close to, you're doing ok)

2, do what phantom suggests and basically pre scale your texture... one way to do this is to find the aspect ratio of your cylinder (again as if you had unfolded a paper model so not distorted to make it square) then make an image that is the same ratio and paint it normally without considering pre-stretching... then either load this image as the texture (textures do not have to be power of 2 (depends on the engine etc) but power of 2 is most efficient) or scale it down until the aspect ratio of the image is 1:1 and a power of 2...

so when you scale your image down to fit the square texture, you'll see that your text and image becomes compressed vertically, but when projected back onto the cylinder it will appear in the correct ratio.

 

[IronRain]

I have finally got some time to try this but I have still one question. Do I need to create a texture map like this?

 

[N_Molson]

And it seems that UV mapper (at least the free version) only accept .obj meshes. Are there plugins for it ? Does the pro version features various formats import ?

 

[IronRain]

And it seems that UV mapper (at least the free version) only accept .obj meshes. Are there plugins for it ? Does the pro version features various formats import ?

You can download the demo of the pro version and as far as I can see you can't import anything else then .obj

 

[N_Molson]

Thanks ! Anyway this is obviously the tool I'm searching for since a few years :facepalm:

That's going to help me a lot on my addon projects !

 

[orb]

I have finally got some time to try this but I have still one question. Do I need to create a texture map like this?

In my opinion it should be stretched/oriented the other way, i.e. vertically, as your object is higher than its perimeter. If you draw text on the current texture map, after applying it, the text will be even more stretched than in your initial (square) texture map.

 

[IronRain]

In my opinion it should be stretched/oriented the other way, i.e. vertically, as your object is higher than its perimeter. If you draw text on the current texture map, after applying it, the text will be even more stretched than in your initial (square) texture map.

This is the same texture map as I used before in the screenshots a couple of posts above.

So what you think is that the map should be rotated 90 degrees?

 

[orb]

So what you think is that the map should be rotated 90 degrees?

Not rotated. Higher than wider. Say, you have 8 meters high cylinder with 2 meters perimeter, and the texture / texture map is applied vertically (top is at top of texture, and bottom is at bottom). So why is the texture map wider than higher? If you paint on such texture, it will be stretched vertically and compressed horizontally.

I'd create a bitmap that corresponds to the dimensions of the cylinder, i.e. to height and perimeter, next paint it, and then rescale to fit in your texture map (in the region for the cylinder). For example, if you have 8 meters high cylinder with 2 meters perimeter, create 2000 pixels high and 500 pixels wide bitmap, paint it, and then rescale to fit in your texture map (in the region that will be applied to mesh).

 

[Coolhand]

Yes, again imagine that the cylinder is made of paper, then unfold it and imagine the shape that you would get - it would be a tall and thin rectangular shape, not short and fat.

But really you should be doing it by method 1 as i describe. Because the way you're doing it, you'll end up with non square pixels on your model, and it makes life more difficult to paint like that, it also doesn't look so pretty, so its not really how it should be done imho...

Better to have a set of non - distorted UV's laid out in a square (so you also don't violate power of 2 rules)

I'm sure there's plenty of free UV mapping capable applications, why not load the model into Blender (freeware) and follow a UV mapping tutorial... It should have a function that will make a basic (non-distorted) set of UV's automatically, its a very simple shape so it should work well.

---------- Post added at 01:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:27 PM ----------

here are lots of uv mapping tutes for blender, a very powerful application that i heartily recommend