Username:

Password:

Fargot Password? / Help

Archive for March 2013

0

Texture Bombing using multiple images

Description

Regular textures like the ones shown above are adequate for most jobs, but occasionally you may want to mix it up a bit and create something a little more unique, yet still make it look organic.

So for example, say I wanted to use the grass, rocks and sand above to create a random terrain image. Now, I could go into Photoshop and create a mashup of these three textures, but once I'm back in modo, if I had to cover an expansive area, I'd still have to contend with the tiling issue, and in the real-world, having tiled rocks and grass just doesn't cut it. That's where texture bombing comes in.

Texture bombing is a procedural technique that helps reduce regular pattern artefacts. We do this by first placing a bunch of different textures into a Group, and then using modo's Texture Replicators, a small copy of one of the Group's images is randomly placed at each vertex across the mesh. From there you can further randomly scale, rotate, and blend the textures together to make the surface appear seamless and quite natural-looking. 

Preparation It's assumed that you've already created your mesh item that you wish to apply your textures to.
Step-by-Step

    Apply texture
    • Select your mesh, apply a material.
    • With the material selected> Add Layer > Image Map > Load Image and bring in several different images. I'm using grass, rocks and sand.
    Correct Gamma
    • Selecting all the texture images at one, under > Properties > Texture Layers > Gamma, divide the gamma 1.0 by 2.2 = .4546
    Adjust Gamma
    Increase Wrap
    • Under > Properties > Texture Locator > Projection, increase both Horizontal & Vertical Wraps so that they appear tiled. Try 10 x 10 (but it really depends on the texture you are using)
    Create Group of textures
    • From the Shader Tree, select all the texture map images you want to use in your 'texture bomb'
    Create Group
    • Go to the > Group tab > New Group, name your group and leave it as Standard
    Create Group
     Replace current image with the Group
    • Under > Properties > Texture Layers > Image, change it to the Group you just created
    IMage Group
    Note: Make sure you have the Render Preview Window open, as texture replicators do not show up in the Open GL viewport.
    Texture Replicator
    • Under > Properties > Texture Locator > Texture Replicator > Particle Source, select the mesh item you wish to apply the image map to.
    • Increase the Particle Size so that each image is almost touching
    • Adjust the Falloff Bias and Gain so that the mess is totally and evenly covered.
    • Adjust the Random Size, Rotation and Random Rotation as required.
    Create Group

And this is a quick and dirty random terrain texture created with the three images at the top of the page.

Create Group
Source

James has recorded two videos on Texture Replicators. The first shows how to make a seamless grass plane, and the second explains texture bombing where you use multiple texture images under a single material.

Author  

MutantPixel (James Darknell)

Related Images:

9.7/103votes
Voting statistics:
RatePercentageVotes
1067%2
933%1
80%0
70%0
60%0
50%0
40%0
30%0
20%0
10%0

Making your own tileable textures

Description

Making your own unique tileable textures is not all that difficult or time consuming and you don't even need to go out to photoshop. In fact, it can all be done within modo using the paint tools, and you can do it in less than 5 minutes!

Assumptions

That you are already familiar with modo's UV mapping and painting tools. (But if not, and you have any questions, please leave a comment below)

Step-by-Step
    • Create a flat plane 3 x 3
    • Create a new UV map using Barycentric projection  UV > UV Projection Tool > Barycentric 
    • Switch to the Paint tab
    • Create a blank texture  > Texture > Add blank colour texture 
    • Start painting your design. No matter what pattern you create it will be tillable!
    • Remember to save your image out > File > Save Image
Barycentric projection
Author Yazan Malkosh
9.7/103votes
Voting statistics:
RatePercentageVotes
1067%2
933%1
80%0
70%0
60%0
50%0
40%0
30%0
20%0
10%0
0

Searching for missing texture image files on Macs

Description

When modo first opens an .lxo file it tries to look for any texture images attached to that scene. If you happen to move your scenes across different machines that have different paths set-up, modo won't always be able to automatically find your texture files. Instead, sometimes it will ask you whether you want to search for them.

Because modo stores image textures under the \Library\Application Support\Content\Assets\Images,  if you try to locate a file saved here using Spotlight, you'll get no results because that folder is restricted from being searched. Two ways to get around this...

Step-by-Step
    • Navigate to your Contents folder and then perform the search, narrowing it down by folder and file name. I actually have a link to my images folder in my Finder sidebar
    or
    • In the spotlight search bar, type in  Filename:"brick_bump.png"  
9.0/101vote
Voting statistics:
RatePercentageVotes
100%0
9100%1
80%0
70%0
60%0
50%0
40%0
30%0
20%0
10%0
0

Where do my .lpk's go?

Around the time modo 601 was launched last year, there was an update to the Asset Sharing site which took advantage of new functionality that was introduced in 601, that supported a new file format called .lpk - which is the Luxology Preset Pack.

Essentially, you go to the Asset Share page on the Luxology site and you download one or more assets which come down as an .lpk file, and all you have to do is drag and drop it into modo and the files are automatically installed and available from your preset browser.

Now, depending on where, or how you have your presets arranged on your computer - that is, either, standard - as they came when you first downloaded the supplied Content from the Luxology site, or, in some other configuration. For instance, I created extra folder categories in addition to the standard directories, which of course would not be recognised). By changing a setting in your Luxology Account Preferences, you have the option of either downloading the share assets to their individual standard folders/directories, or, you can have them installed to the root directory of your assets, and from there you can move them yourself to wherever you want them to be permanently stored.

Luxology Account Preferences

.lpk is just a .zip file

A third option might be to extract the files to some other location. The .lpk file format is actually just a .zip format - that is, you can edit the file extension from .lpk to .zip and then extract the files using your regular WinZip or other file compression utility application.

Download Cart

And in case you didn't realise, you don't have to download assets from the share site individually. You can also choose to select up to 20 Megabytes worth of assets and add them to your Download Cart, and then when you're ready, you can download them all as one big .lpk file, which, as explained above, all you need to do is drag it onto modo, and all the files contained within will be automatically saved into their own respective category folders.

9.3/103votes
Voting statistics:
RatePercentageVotes
1067%2
90%0
833%1
70%0
60%0
50%0
40%0
30%0
20%0
10%0
0

Textures on replicated items not appearing?

Description

Have you ever replicated an item only to find that its textures didn't copy across?

Step-by-Step
    • Select the texture group in the Shader Tree
    • Under Texture Layers > Group > Item, make sure it is set to All
Source http://forums.luxology.com/discussion/topic.aspx?id=61680
Author  Wayne B
9.5/104votes
Voting statistics:
RatePercentageVotes
1050%2
950%2
80%0
70%0
60%0
50%0
40%0
30%0
20%0
10%0