Texturing in Blender

[Phonan]

I know at the moment that a lot of the new units in Creature Zoo are without textures, being left as simply white objects. Seeing as I've fairly capable of using the GIMP and Photoshop, I think that I'd definitely be willing to take a shot at texturing the models.

Of course, this takes me to the main point of this post. How exactly does one texture in Blender? If anyone who actually knows how to do this could simply post a quick how-to (well, hopefully quick. I don't want to waste your time,) I'd truly appreciate it and I can start texturing some of these here units. Any advice anyone can give would be very greatly appreciated.

[Chilibird]

It's a matter of 'unwrapping' the model, and then exporting the resulting UV map. Not an increibly difficult process in theory, but it can be a pain in practice.

basically, you select the lines that you want to use as your 'seams' (Aka- where 2 faces will split). Once you think you have enough seams to avoid a jumbled mess, you can press U (I think) and go to 'unwrap'. The resulting texture outline will appear in the UV panel in blender. You can then go to 'export' (or something like that. It seems to keep changing) and export the outline for editing in a photo editor.

To apply the texture to your model, be sure you have the texture you want (or at least one with the same name. It MUST be the same name) 'imported' into the UV panel, so it shows up in the panel. (You can also view the texture using a render at this point). Export -> Wavefront OBJ -> Include mat. file. (It will be all white otherwise). drop the resulting .obj and .mat files into your mod, and there ya go!

A little note: If you get your model into DT, and discover you aren't happy with something about the texture (Rendering in Blender occasionally doesn't show some little quark about it), all you have to do is edit it, and replace the old texture with the new one. (Hence the reason I say you should keep the layered version of the image as a backup) Restart DT, and there ya go. As long as it has the same name, it will replace the texture on the model.

Hope it helps

[Phonan]

Thank you very much. I'll give this a shot soon, probably on some of the CZ models. Once again, I really appreciate it.

[poesel]

I've uploaded all the files I made for the 90mm barrel and the RA-H gun here:

http://dropteam.johalla.de/download/

It includes the xcf files for the Gimp.

The barrel is a good example because its a very simple model.

Theres also a textures directory with the various camo textures I use as layer.

[Phonan]

I've got some textures done and saved as a .blend file, but when I try to export, it spits out a .obj file and .mat file... however they have no data! If you try to reimport, you get nothing. Nothing appears in DropTeam either. Is there a trick to exporting?

Edit: My object files do appear now, and when I import it into Blender, everything looks fine. However, the objects still don't appear in DropTeam. Any help would be appreciated, but I'll work more on this later until I figure out the problem.

[ August 16, 2007, 10:06 AM: Message edited by: Phonan ]