Bare with me here as I have a noobish question. I had found this website

http://3dchaya.com/views/content/us/architecture/kairou00.html

years back when I was using Bryce...my mouth watered but couldnt figure out how to get the meshes textured as I couldnt break it down into its pieces. Now that im learning Maya and after two terms of school pushing into texturing. What im doing now is texturing the pieces and just learning UVs. Im opening this mesh in Maya and since the mesh is in one piece all I can think is to create one large UV for the mesh, cut it up into pieces and texture each piece? Or is there a better way to get something like this textured? And yes im working on modelling things like this myself, Its much more meaningfull now to look at meshes and figure out how they`re made, makes me appreciate em more too :)

 Is this generally what I need to do upon creation of meshes? What i`ve been doing is to leave it where people can access the parts for texturing, I guess having in mind those who dont have maya or max etc. What is the best way to create for distribution here as a freebie?

Thanks

The answer can vary depending on your specific requirements. It depends on how much texture resolution you need. That depends on how close is your camera going to be to it? It also depends on if this is an asset to be used in Maya or if you're preparing it for some other program like a game engine or something. It also depends on how detailed you want to get with the textures themselves. Will all pillars be textured identically or will there be a lot of individual variation?

If it's a background asset or being used for a game engine or something I would break the object apart such that I would have 'slice' of hallway I could duplicate repeatedly to be as long as I need it to be. That single slice would all share a single UV space as one object. You could later 'join' the duplicated sections back together as one huge hallway, and each repeated section would share the same UV space as the previous section. However this approach will not work if you want to be able to have something like mold growth that is unique per-pillar or whatever.

I know it sounds like a crappy answer, but it really does depend on your specific needs and the needs of those people you're giving the asset to.

-Modulok-

Thank you for the reply...interested in a minimum of middle ground use and foreground if I can make it look good enough. Would like to make it look a lil worn, thus weathered and real. End use would be in Vue. I had never thought of slicing it up. Your answer was awesome so thanks again. Struggling thru texturing and UVS at this point so need a lil ray of sunshine. Thanks again.

Yeah, it takes a lot of practice to get an intuitive feel of what is needed. I guess the only solid advice I can give is this: don't commit yourself to a strict waterfall development model where you have to finish step 1 completely before moving on to step 2, etc. Sometimes its best to make a crappy, quick and dirty version and carry it through to the finished product, or as far as you can get with it, and then go back where it's obvious things need changed and rinse and repeat until you have something you or the client is satisfied with.

By using a more incremental, evolutionary way of making things, you can start to feel out your own unknown requirements without wasting a lot of time on a specific step that, in the end, might not have even been necessary. I still struggle with this myself sometimes. It can feel like you're wasting time making a quick and dirty stand-in, but it really helps you get to know exactly what your project actually needs and saves time in the end. Otherwise you might spend a day perfecting some water stain on a back wall only to later discover that it will be covered by a painting or potted plant or abandoned in favor of a completely different set or something.

Evolution is the key to sanity. An added benefit of this approach, especially for personal projects, is you don't have to "finish" it, which a lot of artists struggle with. You can instead get bored and move on at any point and the project is still in a completed state, and given enough iterations will still look pretty decent. This is better than having halfway finished project that the first 20% is totally wicked - but will never be finished enough to see the light of day.

In your case, make a crappy version for Vue! Import it into Vue mess around with it, see what is good enough and what needs changed. Rinse and repeat until you're out of time, or patience and then call it done.

-Modulok-

yep, thats what we were taught in modelling class, start basic and keep refining. For me at this point I may not be good enough to do something really fine but will be doing the best I can. Need to practicem stretch and always be improving. Going with projecting textures on faces for the 2d bitmaps...any good sites on making shaders? as in figuring out or giving recipes to make different ones?

Thanks again.

For shaders you might check out www.creativecrash.com as well as of course Autodesk's own section https://area.autodesk.com/downloads/index/shaders

As far as tutorials on how to make them... umm... you might scour youtube for some various odds and ends.

cool, thanks :)