bending MAX textures?

[Giovanni]

Hi all,
I need to "bend" some maps along a circle.
I know I can "bend" geometry, and the UV will follow the bend modifier, but how do I bend the UV ONLY, not the geometry?

The only thing I can think of right now is to map a plane, bend it, and then render a new map of the bended material. Then I can apply the bended texture to my non bent material.

Any other way?

thank you

regards

gio

[^Lele^]

Cylindrical mapping, no cap.
Adjust tiling as needed.
UV UnWrap, select the inner vertices in viewport, go to the uvw unwrap edit window and move them upward.
This should have your image nicely mapped around the circular object.

[Shimakaze]

You can also read up on the channel info utility. Using that you can swap the UV and the main object channel, letting you manipulate the UVs with the normal Max tools. Lele's way is much simpler though. Cylindrical mapping would be the way to go with a normal circle.

[^Lele^]

The channel info stuff is crazy.
UV mapping with the clothing tools is insane

[Shimakaze]

I know! I love that technique. Never been able to use it but never give up trying. :P

[Giovanni]

hmm, I don't think I have been very clear. I tried the cylindrical mapping (UVW Mapping), but it is not working.

What I need is not to wrap a map on a cylindrical shape, but on a flat surface.
For example, take a course of bricks (map) and apply it to a plane. Tile.
Then bent the plane, so it looks like the plan of a thater, like a fan.
The map follows nicely, the courses of bricks are aligning to an arc now, they are not linear anymore.

I need to "bent" a map, like that, but on geometry that cannot be "bended" with the modifier, it is a floor with a fixed shape. But the floor pattern tiles along a semicircle.

Maybe I misunderstood how to use cylindrical mapping...

Thank you

gio

[Shimakaze]

Use spherical mapping like this:


or use the channel info utility and use the bend modifier directly on the UVs:

[^Lele^]

hmm, I don't think I have been very clear. I tried the cylindrical mapping (UVW Mapping), but it is not working.

What I need is not to wrap a map on a cylindrical shape, but on a flat surface.
For example, take a course of bricks (map) and apply it to a plane. Tile.
Then bent the plane, so it looks like the plan of a thater, like a fan.
The map follows nicely, the courses of bricks are aligning to an arc now, they are not linear anymore.

I need to "bent" a map, like that, but on geometry that cannot be "bended" with the modifier, it is a floor with a fixed shape. But the floor pattern tiles along a semicircle.

Maybe I misunderstood how to use cylindrical mapping...

Thank you

gio

You did explain yourself quite allright the first time around.
I prepared you a PSD with the two screenshots as layers.
You'll find it here:http://rapidshare.com/files/62471766...pping.rar.html

[Shimakaze]

See? You've got three different ways to do it now

[Giovanni]

hmm, I don't think I have been very clear. I tried the cylindrical mapping (UVW Mapping), but it is not working.

What I need is not to wrap a map on a cylindrical shape, but on a flat surface.
For example, take a course of bricks (map) and apply it to a plane. Tile.
Then bent the plane, so it looks like the plan of a thater, like a fan.
The map follows nicely, the courses of bricks are aligning to an arc now, they are not linear anymore.

I need to "bent" a map, like that, but on geometry that cannot be "bended" with the modifier, it is a floor with a fixed shape. But the floor pattern tiles along a semicircle.

Maybe I misunderstood how to use cylindrical mapping...

Thank you

gio

You did explain yourself quite allright the first time around.
I prepared you a PSD with the two screenshots as layers.
You'll find it here:http://rapidshare.com/files/62471766...pping.rar.html

Thank you lele, I got it, and reproduced it.
However, you built a donut, extruded it, and applied the mapping and unwrap.
Now, draw a plane, 10x10 sides or more. Can you copy those UV from the donut to the plane?

I will play with the other method next....


thank you

[Giovanni]

Use spherical mapping like this:


or use the channel info utility and use the bend modifier directly on the UVs:

Care to elaborate on this very, very cryptic line?

eheh

How do you use a modifier dierctly on the UV mapping?

thank you

[Shimakaze]

Well the channel info utility is pretty powerful and you really should read up on it in the Max help documents and on the net. but here's a step by step to get the result in my screenshot:

1: Create a plane, apply a material to it and make sure it has UV mapping. (generate mapping coords)
2: Open the channel info utility.
-----Basically what this utility does is it shows you exactly what channels of data the selected object contains. You get to see and mess around with the stuff 3ds max usually does automatically. The first channel in the list is your mesh. The next ones are for vertex color, alpha and so on. unless you're a games programmer you won't have much use for those. The last channel on the list should be "1:map". This is your UV map channel.-----
3: Right click any of the channels and click add. this will add an empty channel at the bottom of the list called 2:map.
4: Right click the mesh channel and select copy, then click on 2:map and select paste. This will back up your mesh info.
5: Right click 1:map and choose copy and then right click the mesh channel and select paste (this will overwrite your mesh data with your UV data)
-----At this point you can do whatever you want to the UV information as long as you don't add or remove any vertices or lines.-----
6: Apply the bend modifier.
7: copy the mesh layer and paste it to 1:map.
8: copy 2:map and paste it to the mesh layer. (this will restore your original mesh again leaving the modified UVs in their original possition. you can now clear 2:map.
9: The scale of the UVs are probably off at this point so add an Unwrap UVW modifier and use Tools/Pack UVs to scale them down to the right size.
10: Eat cake!

--edit--- oh almost forgot... segmentation matters. If your original plane didn't have a lot of segments you can apply a mesh smooth at the end to smooth out the UVs.

[LarsSonparsson]

Shimakaze: thanks for good explanation. How ever, I didn't manage
to get any results. I tried it two times following those steps using
plane and bend modifier. I understand how it should work, but nothing...

-LarsSon

[Shimakaze]

Look at the number of verts in each channel. the UV map channel should have slightly more then the Mesh channel. if you do it correctly you should be able to tell by those numbers.
Lets say you make a plane that's 4x4 segments. the mesh channel should have 25 verts and the UV channel should have 35. When you swap them you need to make sure the mesh channel has 35 vertices before applying the bend modifier.
If you did the step by step right your modifier list should look like this:

Unwrap UVW
UVW Mapping Paste
UVW Mapping Paste
Bend
UVW Mapping Paste
UVW Mapping Paste
UVW Mapping Add
Plane

and the mesh channel should again have 25 verts and the UVW channel 35.
If it still doesn't work, what exactly happens when you try?

[pixelstudio]

hmm i also find this hard to do. specialy when you want your mapping to be exact.

In this example are a couple of different way to do. bend gives nice results with the mapping correct. but then the mesh is not exact.



scene download: Download