Rotating bitmaps on objects

[mr-miley]

Hi all 

A quick question that I have a feeling I already know the answer to..... I have a TGO that I have imported as a single object. It has an image applied to the whole thing. When I rotate the object to fit with the scene, it appears not to rotate the image with it. It is important that the image runs in a certain direction for the thing to look right, and I can't find any way to rotate this within Terragen. Am I missing something?

Ta

Miles

[sonshine777]

How is the image mapped? sounds like it is "Through the Camera".  If the model was mapped to the image it should be set to "Object UV (if available)"

[mr-miley]

Sonshine777, The projection is set to Object UV if available and not through camera. Ho hum, I'll just have to carry on fiddling (oooeeerrrr mrs  )

[sonshine777]

That's odd indeed. Did the image map render out ok in the program that you exported from?

[mr-miley]

I Think so, I'll have to check though

[DeathTwister]

Also you may want to make sure you have remapped your model again, and re-dropped your stack after re-mapping to edible mesh (if in max) for exporting it out as a simple mesh, as it should remember the UV mapping that you had put on it. even the sub-mapping if done right, although I am having issues with mapping as well when it comes to models inc to tgd2 as well. If in XSI I had to re-save the mapping as shaders to export out to tgd2 .obj and then had mapping isses to address as well once I brought them in, but fixed it for the most part.  There is issues when dealing with .obj's or other formates still coming into tgd2 still, but I am sure they will get a handle on it soon.  and finally it would be nice to be able to rotate the texture only with control (when you want it to rotate) and as well tileing options on the base level for the model as well.  Submapping tweaks would be nice, but there are shader work arounds that will help.

DT

[bigben]

What happens if you import the original object and rotate it?

[mr-miley]

Bigben.... tried that, did the same thing. It maps fine if you don't rotate the object. As it happens, I have just the right view of the object so that I can get away with Through Camera. Definately think that this needs to be fixed / catered for. It doesn't matter for a lot of objects, but for certain types of things, its going to be a right pain if you can't rotate the maps with the object. 

[DeathTwister]

Humm, I wonder if in part my texture mapping trouble may be due in part to what you are having trouble with, never thought it could be a rotate texture problem that would change the way the texturing I re-did to tile 4 times I did in one of my perspectives I had wanted to enter in the PR contest. Hummm, still have to find the right torus and re-map it and play with the settings, well I get to it right now other things to do, but it is a thought /smiles....I am sure this will be an ongoing thread for a bit until they get more work on the import model function better.

DT

[Oshyan]

Image maps should rotate properly with an object when they are set to "UV if available" mapping, provided the object has UV coordinates to map to.

mr-miley, where did this object come from and are you sure it has UV coordinates? When you imported it into TG2 did it load the image automatically or did you have to add it manually to the multi-shader? Perhaps if you can share the object file we can help diagnose the problem.

- Oshyan

[mr-miley]

Oshyan

I have a feeling it may be to do with the mapping coords. Its a freebie I had down off the net (can't remember where from). It textures fine in POVRAY etc, but I do have to reapply the textures in the multishader (which is blank) when I import it. Do you think if I did the texturing in 3D Studio it would actually apply the mapping coords?

[Oshyan]

I'm not familiar enough with 3D Studio's mapping or export parameters to be sure, but if it creates UV mapping coordinates for a texture (i.e. it's not set to a standard internal mapping such as "spherical"), then it should work. What you should see after export is an OBJ file and a MTL file. The MTL file should be non-zero in size and you can look at the contents with a normal text editor (notepad, etc). You should see an entry inside for each texture you applied with accompanying coordinates for mapping. That's a lot of "shoulds"!

- Oshyan

[bobbystahr]

Oshyan

I have a feeling it may be to do with the mapping coords. Its a freebie I had down off the net (can't remember where from). It textures fine in POVRAY etc, but I do have to reapply the textures in the multishader (which is blank) when I import it. Do you think if I did the texturing in 3D Studio it would actually apply the mapping coords?

As you successfully did it in POVRAY might I suggest getting PoseRAY and converting it to .obj from the POV file. It works fine for fixing .obj and converting .3ds[all I've tried so far] so should work fine for you.
You can get it here:
http://mysite.verizon.net/sfg0000/

[rcallicotte]

I concur with Bobby.     I love PoseRay.

[mr-miley]

Ta very much for all your suggestions guys. I tried loads of different apps to get the textures to "map" correctly onto the object (which it appears does not contain material mapping coords) but my knowlege of high end 3D apps isn't that good and I just couldn't get them to map to coords correctly so in the end I thought s*d it and I recreated the object in 3D studio from scratch (quite easy really) and textured the new object (as it was created from scratch all the component objects already had UV mapping "built in") in 3DS. This exported with "propperly mapped" UV coords and now when I rotate the object, all the materials rotate with it. A warning for others who have stuff from the net. Make sure the object has UV mapping coords. For a lot of objects (like plant life etc) it probably wouldn't matter if they didn't, but for certain things it most certainly dos matter