Universal Forum Archive

ok im trying to get into modeling/texturing etc but it doesnt seem to want to work for me.
I understand the concept of it all and what I have to do im just having trouble doing it. I am using

Google sketchup 6 for modeling as I heard it was a good one to start with.

UVmapper/Lithunwrap for UVmapping this is part I am having the most trouble with as it doesnt seem to want to work for me and every tutorial I try seems to not work.

Paintshop pro 7 for texturing but might get photoshop if its better but im not up to this part yet.

For starters I made a basic model of a vehicle factory that I want to use its nothing hard. I then exported it as a .obj file and opened it in Lithunwrap and after abit of mucking around as I couldnt find a tutorial for it I thought I worked it out and seperated all the parts of the model and group them like roof, front, leftside, rightside etc... Thats were I got stuck I didnt know what else I had to do so then I exported the UVmap as a bmp file but all the file showed was a black screen with nothing. I tried using UVmapper pro and thought It was good I had it all grouped in colours and lined up etc but then relised I couldnt save it so I was stuck again.

If anyone can help me out at all or knows what im doing wrong it will be much appreciated thankyou.

Sketchup the free version is useless for this application. You need something that can make .x or 3ds.

Unless you paid the hundreds of dollars for the full version of sketch-up, if you did then you can export as a 3ds model.

I personall use Wings3d : http://www.wings3d.com/ its very easy to use once you do the tutorial you get the idea.

you can even unfold the model in wings (before you export as a 3ds) and once you fiddle with the projections or the cuts of the model in wings getting it unfolded and expanded in the square picture, its a simple matter to hit print screen and move that to say MS paint pasting and reducing the image down to the single bvlue square - then you can add textures or even convert that to a paintshop program.

My skills with UV mappers is low, thus I just take a lot of images of textures, cut, crop, stretch, etc and splice it all together through MS paint. I also have made a lot of reusuable textures like doors, windows, blah.

No my work is not as great or realistic, but its clean. If you have better art skills.... LOL

hey thanks for the help but I no longer use them programs as I have 3dsmax 9 now. It is an awsome program bit harder to use then sketchup but it is alot more powerful and can do more with it.

That's great. I will be sending you all my models to skin... if you don't mind

Joking.