Attached Link: lightsabre tutorial shader

Hi Folks: I need a brushed steel shader for a logo I'm designing. If possible based on a photoshop texture map. I'd love it if anyone can point me at some good photoshop texture tutorials, especially how to use the offset to make infinite tiles.)) I have the shader from Litst's lightsabre tutorial but it doesn't map well to my object (which is a vertex model.) Thanks for reading this. deedub

In PS just make sure that the Offset values are half your image map dimensions. So for an image 256 x 400 pixels (width x height) put 128 in the Horizontal figure and 200 in the Vertical. Then make sure 'Wrap Around' is checked and click OK. Now, using the Clone tool get rid of the horizontal and vertical lines that will have appeared in the middle of your image, being careful not to change the pixels along the edges (otherwise it won't tile well). That's it. You can test it in PS by selecting the whole image (Ctrl+A) then Edit>Define Pattern. Got to File>New for a new image and make it much large than your tile, select all, Edit>Fill>Contents>Use Pattern. In Carrara 3 (if you are using it) you could use the UVMapping feature in the Vertex Modeler to output a template that you could use - but of course there would be no need to tile an image if you were doing this. Otherwise make sure you use an appropriate mapping mode in the Shader tree and test the number of tiles to get the best result. HTH Mark

Thanks for the reply Mark. I don't know why that photoshop technique won't stay in my aging brain. I'm learning more and more about the UVmapping in C3 (thanks to some fine tutorials in 3DXtract) and will try it in this case since I have specific thoughts about which way I want the 'grain' to be oriented on the 'logo object.' I'm messing with Bryce, MOJO world and Carrara terrain to make two panoramas for a background to the animation right now, so it'll be a while. (Don't have the cash for terragen right now.) Man, a model's not much use without the right textures. deedub

3DXtract, eh? I'll take a look over there. I think I've puzzled out most of Carrara's UV mapper now and although some parts of it still bug me I'm starting to get some decent maps out of it.

Nomuse: The tutorial I'm referring to is the first ("Texturing Part One') of a series of three by Brian Hinton. I believe it was in the Feb. 2004 3DXtract e-zine. Brian put his e-mail for questios on the tutorials in so I'll give it to you: bnh2@comcast.net. After you designate the shading domaines in the vertex modeller, he has you make a 'layers list' and then select Parametric mapping in the multichannel shader below. This opened up a list of all the little domaines on my logo object. There are so many because I'm going to make an effect of heating and cooling with gradients...I hope. Mark: The 'brushed chrome' still doesn't map well, so I'm off searching photoshop tutorials for a technique to paint 'brushed metal.' I look forward to mastering this 'shader domaines' thing. One step at a time. deedub

Hi deedub, To 'paint' a brushed metal texture, you can try this: In Photoshop, open a new document and add noise with the 'noise' filter. Then add a bunch of horizontal motion blur with the 'motion blur' filter. Make the map seamless using the offset/clone stamp method described above, add it to your bump channel and tweak settings as necessary. Hope you find this useful. Dennis