Texture direction

[michael john williams]

With Architect and Renderworks how do you change the direction of the texture? For example, in the wood textures they are mainly horizontally but what if you want to do vertical cladding? How do you change the direction of the texture?

[Travis]

With obejct in question selected, click on the Render tab of the OIP. You can change rotation by entering a number for degrees (say 90?) or you can click Mapping to go to a more detailed control panel.

There will be times when you can't get a texture to map the way you really want it. I've often then converted the object to mesh which creates a separate panel for each plane. Then from the Mapping dialog, you can orient the texture on the individual planes however you like. Gives a great deal of control.

Good luck,

[islandmon]

Travis ... you always offer so much valuable working knowledge ; )

[CipesDesign]

Often with walls, or other multiple objects, VW's forces you to select each item one at a time in order to change the texture rotation. Because this is way too time consuming I sometimes just create a new texture resource, which I can then apply via the class setup dialog, to whole groups of objects. It is very easy to do. First texture something (a wall or a cube) with the (horizontal, wood) texture. Next, select the object and change the rotation by 90?. Then export a JPG (which you will need to carefully crop with the marquee for proper tiling). I usually let the JPG go to my desktop (Mac) so it is easy to find for the next step. Now go the the resource browser>new resource>new RW's texture. Name the new texture. In "Color" choose "image color and then select the JPG. Now you need to play around a bit with the size (but you can also do that later). Voil? a new horizontal wood texture...

[ 07-22-2005, 10:04 AM: Message edited by: CipesDesign ]

[Travis]

Good point, Peter.

I could have mentioned that we have gradually "converted" nearly every "lineal" texture file into a pair of -V (vert) and -H (horiz) files. Using the protocol Peter describes.

Armstrong, you're just jealous because I get to go sno-skiing 8 months of the year and water-skiing the other 8! The runs were pretty limited (and pretty much like mashed potatoes), but we did actually strap on slats in June this year. Water-skied the weekend before (in a drysuit!) on a lake you could see from the ski-lift. I must admit that I really like having 4 seasons and tall mountains.

[islandmon]

T'mon, come on up next winter to our Chalet @ Heavenly ... this summer you can water ski at lake Tahoe... you're always welcome. When I lived in santa Cruz we used to surf in the mornings and ski Bear Valley before dinner : )

[alanmac]

Travis

No wonder you get so much work done, whilst we have to be content with 12 you have 16 months in your year to get stuff done. ;>)

[islandmon]

This explains why the T'mon always offers such informative & useful advise. He living & thriving in modulo16... whilst we doth be stuck in mod12. Pity the poor mod10 folk.

[DDDesign]

What Peter has described is really creating a set of imaged based shaders. Renderworks comes with a set of powerful timber "solid" shaders, that effectively create 3D textures, and the results will differ enormously depending on how your object "slices" the shader. You can spend ages trying to get the right look by manipulting the axes. Then you pick another object, and you might have to go through the whole process again. That's why I stick to (2D) image based or wrapped shaders, they're much easier to use.

My alternative to Travis's use of meshes to specify different mappings on the one object is to convert to Nurbs.

[Travis]

I'm curious re the difference(s) between mesh and a Nurbs surface with respect to accepting textures. (I've settled on meshes because it seems a little easier to edit their geometry, if needed.)

Any insight appreciated.

[DDDesign]

Actually, I don't see how a mesh is going to help. If say, you convert a cube into a mesh, it remains one object, I can't see how you render different faces. If on the other hand you convert the cube to nurbs and ungroup, each face is separately selectable and can be rendrered or even classified individually.

Also, I wouldn't necessarily agree with the ease of editing meshes. Although I'm still more comfortable with solid objects than nurbs, complex meshes can have far too many vertices and it can be very messy to manipulate them.

[Travis]

I'm so glad I asked the question and you responded. For some unknown reason, I had mesh on the brain: I've actually been using NURBs, going inside the group, and editing the various planes.

David's right, converting to a mesh doesn't give the desired control.

[DDDesign]

Pleased to be of help!

On the other hand I was afraid someone was going to write and demonstrate how stupid I was because I didn't realize how a mesh could be used. What a relief!

[Kaare Baekgaard]

I have a wish list entry for the ability to rotate textures globally. Hopefully it will be implemented in version 12.

[DDDesign]

Likewise, I have a wish list entry for a "grain direction tool". Just click and drag to set grain direction.