AC3D Forums - View Single Post - Having MAJOR issue getting things exported

Kireyo · 29th August 2008, 08:24 AM

You're welcome, I know how hard it is to understand these pesky UV maps, I'm still having trouble with them.
About those 4 vertices on top: I just deleted them, nothing more. (in vertex mode, click on them, hit del).
I used "divide" from the Surface menu to divide the surfaces into more vertices, on the whole object, afterwards. This has nothing to do with the previous step, for some reason I couldn't see the edges clearly in the TCE, that's why I used it.
I didn't do anything with the TCE because the result was already more or less adequate. I'll leave it up to you to fine-tune the UV map if necessary.

About the whole optimizing-the-UV-map thing, I repeat, I'm also a newbie, I just started looking at these last week. I might be wrong, but this is how I imagine it: the setup of the UV map is important because second life uses a texture (sculpt map) to transform a prim into a sculptie, basically by folding a square map together. Imagine a blanket that you wrap together to make a shape. That's why it is important that there are no holes in the blanket, and that it is a perfect square, and here's the really hard part, the surfaces in the UV map can't overlap either, or you'll get some very weird inside-out results.
A texture (or skin as you called it) also uses this UV map to transform a 2D picture into a 3D drawing that fits onto the sculptie. Basically, the UV map says : "put this bitmap on that position of the model".

Again, half of the time I don't know what I'm talking about, feel free to correct me.

29th August 2008, 08:24 AM	#18
Kireyo Member Expert member Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Belgium Posts: 53	Re: Having MAJOR issue getting things exported You're welcome, I know how hard it is to understand these pesky UV maps, I'm still having trouble with them. About those 4 vertices on top: I just deleted them, nothing more. (in vertex mode, click on them, hit del). I used "divide" from the Surface menu to divide the surfaces into more vertices, on the whole object, afterwards. This has nothing to do with the previous step, for some reason I couldn't see the edges clearly in the TCE, that's why I used it. I didn't do anything with the TCE because the result was already more or less adequate. I'll leave it up to you to fine-tune the UV map if necessary. About the whole optimizing-the-UV-map thing, I repeat, I'm also a newbie, I just started looking at these last week. I might be wrong, but this is how I imagine it: the setup of the UV map is important because second life uses a texture (sculpt map) to transform a prim into a sculptie, basically by folding a square map together. Imagine a blanket that you wrap together to make a shape. That's why it is important that there are no holes in the blanket, and that it is a perfect square, and here's the really hard part, the surfaces in the UV map can't overlap either, or you'll get some very weird inside-out results. A texture (or skin as you called it) also uses this UV map to transform a 2D picture into a 3D drawing that fits onto the sculptie. Basically, the UV map says : "put this bitmap on that position of the model". Again, half of the time I don't know what I'm talking about, feel free to correct me.