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    Instructions :Volumes #1 & #2  
   
   
 

 

  
 

#14 Now your ready to use BodyPaint3D to paint the Levels of Detail textures on your model.

First make sure to install the Levels of Detail color brushes by importing them into the colors pallet.

Next lets set up the texture. Open the Layers Pallet and go to channels menu.

Now add the channels needed to take full advantage of the LOD brushes
add diffusion
add bump
add specular color
add displacement

  
 

In order to use the colors, you must turn on the multi brush aspect of Bodypaint 3D. Then Turn on the channels as shown below. Double click on the background to view your texture and UV cords.

  
 

#15 choose one of the Levels of detail colors in the color pallet.
download here

Paint the entire object and view the results your cleaned UV's now match the object and can be adjusted to solve stretching.



Try moving the UV's and scaling to them get your textures just right.

 
 

You now have a seamless textured rock that can be painted in real time Raytrace texture. Next lets perk up the texture a bit, we were working with the default settings in the material tab, double click on the UV1 texture the channels are already checked off

 
 

color - need to be adjusted to 100%
diffusion-brightness 65-mix set to add and set to 67


specular-width 71%-height 4%
specular color-r78%-g68.9%-B 61%- brightness 89% - Mix 83%


bump-should be set to 25-45% displacement-strength 15-30% - Max height -5 to -12m
now hit refresh and render that texture. A lot more realistic.

Try some different settings and render the results, displacement can only be viewed apon final render.

  
 

#16 Now you have a seamless surface. It still doesn't look like a rock so now lets fix that aspect. First duplicate the polygon rock in the objects pallet name the copy rock2. Now you can play with some of the different modeling tools to shape your rock. Finally lets add a hyper nurbs to the project and attach the rock2 save your project. I have also added a Plane with the LOD free water texture applied.

Notice that the UV's and the texture stay in place are not effected when you modify the surface.

 
 

There are some issues with this UV mapping technic, one is that it would be very hard to paint in the flat texture window
the UV's are not completely connected. Here is another way to UV map a rock shaped object.turn off the rock 2, and hypernurbs in the object pallet save your project make a copy of the original polygon rock and name it rock3.

 
 

17. Lets remap this object. In the Texture window go to functions / start interactive mapping select flat mapping, In the objects menu select the tag with the x thru it select the top view port and in the objects pallet/texture/adapt to view/ then one more time go to the objects pallet/texture/fit to object/ now delete the the original UV cords then click objects pallet/texture/generate UVW cords/ now you can see the UVs from the top remember that both top and bottom are being viewed.

  
 
 
 
 
 

18. now scale the UV's and place them in the texture thats already painted, move them around a view the results. This techique will cause seams where the two edges meet. In the texture view you can modify the points to fix these seams

(One trick that I have used on hi res models is to pull the center edge under the rock to completely avoid seams)


This technique allows for painting both sides of many rocks in a hurry, next lets repeat the modeling process used with the first rock. This technique also allows for painting in the texture window as you can now just use the brush to cover the object in a much smaller area of the texture, this also allows you to use a single texture for many objects.

( for more realistic rocks increase the res. of the original primitive object and the texture maps)

Now you have the basics to create seamless UV mapped objects very fast and they will have UV coordinates that can be adjusted to very exact needs. The project files have been made available so you can explore these techniques

Thanks for trying my first tutorial feel free to contact me at darrin@levelsofdetail.com if you have any questions, corrections
and or tips for the next tutorial.

  
 
 
 
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