displacement on object

[Dune]

I'm getting the hang of modeling in Lightwave, but sometimes encounter strange problems when applying displacement in Terragen. Such as with this 'boatbarn'. The roof is a subpatched, extruded plane, frozen, and a UV-texture was applied after making a planar surface in one angle (I think Z), if you're familiar with LW. Even unwrapped it and painted onto the 'unwrapped roof'. So far so good, but when applying a tiny displacement to enhance the thatched roof, this happens....
Strangely the underside and long sides did displace as I hoped, it's just the two short sides that don't. Now that I write this down, I think it might be the angle of the surface I applied. If using Z, the X sides won't displace well. Would that be it? But if using Y the undersides and sides won't do well...
If anybody knows how to handle this, I'd be much obliged to hear!

---Dune

[cyphyr]

Your right, its probably the projection thats causing the distorted images. Try using Atlas projetion for your uvmap. Everything should then displace and texture along its normal.

Richard

[gregsandor]

You have to map that part from the front not the top.  Post a wire and I'll be better able to tell, but it looks to me like you've mapped the front polys from the top instead of from the front.

[Henry Blewer]

I think Greg is right Ulco. You may have to  use a UV unwrap tool. This will take the roof structure and make it flat. Then the image maps can be applied to the flattened roof.
I have tried and tried to do this in Blender. I never was able to get it to work. But that's Blender....

[Dune]

@ Richard: I tried atlas as well, but ended up with squarish straight edges near the roof ridge. OK for the minuscule displacement, but I also wanted to add a 'dirt' power fractal over the whole roof. And the latter is then also mapped according to the atlas projection, giving straight edges.
@ Greg: I have thought of that (picking out the 'side' polys and giving them an X-projected surface, instead of everything at Y, which I indeed did), but then again you'd have a distinct edge between the two, where an overall powerfractal color would show a hard difference. The best would be a map that takes the whole thing inside out and 'flattens' it, resulting in projection according to the polygons' normals. After LW I used Poseray to try out different projections, but whichever I chose, there was always a side that got weird.
@ Henry: I did use an unwrapper, but the polys on the lower roof edge are miniscule, very close together. It would have to stretch those somehow...

Perhaps it's the way I make the roof. I am now trying one with a harder angle where the thatch ends, so the weird displacement and coloring won't be that visible.

Any other ideas will be most appreciated.

---Dune

[Kadri]

Dune is this one object?  Did you tried it with breaking the object in more parts , as multiple objects ?
Lightwave's UV tools are not so much good . But there are some plugins for Lightwave that everyone says are very good.
I am not good at UV . Thus i was going to try them out too. I will look for the plugins .
Maybe you know them already .

Edit : http://homepage2.nifty.com/nif-hp/index2_english.htm

Kadri.

[Dune]

No, it's a combination of 6 layers of 'objects': roof, 2 walls, door, 2 series of beams and poles. But the roof is one 'frozen' object that troubles me the most. I can't seem to map it 'around', so to speak. I used the plugin 'unwrap', but Poseray can export an unwrapped roof image to paint on as well. But it's never really unwrapped, the side poly's are very close together, as seen from above, if you get my point.

---Dune

[Henry Blewer]

I may have a way. In Blender there is instancing for particles; all sorts of effects can be done. Why not use the particle instancing in Lightwave? I am sure it has control splines like Blenders. You can make 'straw' and 'comb' it just right.

Now render a top down orthographic view. This should provide a correct texture for Terragen 2.

[Kadri]

There is a interesting technique from William Vaughan using dynamics in Lightwave for UV unwrapping .

Go here : http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/24hours_training.php

Then look for   " UV unwrapping with Dynamics:* " in the SURFACING / TEXTURING  section near the middle of the page .

It is a 31,6 mb  mov tutorial . There are many good tutorials too there , Dune.

Maybe this can help you.

Cheers.

Kadri.

[Dune]

Thanks guys, I've downloaded some movies. Now back to learning...

@Henry: I'm afraid the model will be very hi-poly then. That's not really what I'm after. But thanks for thinking with me.

[Henry Blewer]

Actually, the particle instancing is just used to make the texture map. After the image is ready, a simpler mesh can be used.

[gregsandor]

Dune -- send me your roof model in .obj format and let me have a go at it.

[airflamesred]

Dune
Did you import the multi-layer obj vie thr lwo reader? I can only import 1 layer via the obj reader

[Dune]

@ Greg: Found your site. Impressive, and nice that you're into archeology as well. I mail you. In the meantime I tried to divide the whole 'frozen subpatched' roof in parts to be textured from different angles (XYZ), but that's quite a job, and you still see the angles. Just like in atlas projection.

@Henry: I'll check it out.

@airflamesred: No, I hauled it through Poseray, saved it as obj, imported as obj.