Quick and dirty 1:1 texture tutorial

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

For those of you who want to add extra value to your textures by making them line up with parts of your model, you can make what is called (or, at least, what I call) a 1:1 texture. Meaning, you don't have a bitmap that tiles over and over or one that you need to stretch with a UVW map top get to the right size, but rather one that is designed for one specific place on a model and fits without tiling.

NOTE: To do this properly, you will need an image editor that uses layers. In this tutorial I use Photoshop, but GIMP and other like it are acceptable alternatives.

~~~~~

Lets say you have a little building with some extraordinary roof junk and a nice, but simple roof texture.

I call it "The No-Door Bar, Grille, and Dental Supply Emporium LLC."

Lets say this is the bitmap you want to use for your roof. Its nice, but nothing special:

You put this in your BAT thread and some annoying HoTsim jerk keeps pestering you about better roof textures. You want to get back at this whiny shmuck and make a really nice roof material. So what do you do?

First things first. Take a nice big screenshot of the top (orthogonal) view of your model. I'd also turn off the "Show Standard map in viewport" option off or simply use the wire frame for this.

Yep, that's The No-Door Bar, Grille, and Dental Supply Emporium LLC in all it's glory.

You have a screenshot and thats all well and good, but what now? Post that baby into your roof texture bitmap (you may want to lower the opacity so you can see the texture under it)

Then scale it up to fit the size of the bitmap.

NOTE: it is very important to hold SHIFT to constrain proportions while you scale. If you don't, then nothing will line up properly. Also, make sure no areas are cut off by the edge of the canvass after you have finish scaling.

After that's all said and done, crop the whole thing to the very edges of what is the roof in your model (that is, crop out the walls). You can ignore cut-outs in your model, but they can be handy for identifying the orientation of your model on the texture.

At this point you may want to save a version of this texture to check the placement. Back in your model, add a UVWmap to the roof object, but do not change the dimensions. The values generated should be the exact size of the object. If you had a 5x5x5m box and added a UVWmap, the UVW map should start out as 5x5m (5x5x5m when you select "box" within the modifier).

You may have to rotate or re-orient the bitmap using the gizmo on the UVWmap, but the size and X,Y,Z location should be correct.

I hid the roof junk so I could see how well things lined up. If you look close you can see the faint green lines that were present on the bitmap as well.

You are one step closer to showing that BAT troll whats what, congratulations! Now comes the fun.

From here, you will want to add a new layer OVER both the base/source bitmap and the screenshot you added, and only paint on that layer (see HERE to look at what order you should have). Using your screenshot as a guide, start painting along edges, around junk, and anything else you want with a good brush with low opacity and flow (so you don't go overboard). Add stains, rust marks, replaced roofing sections, or whatever else you want. You should end up with something like this:

Obviously you want to turn off your guide before you save this and apply it to your model. The final bitmap you will use will be like this:

Unhide your roof junk and see how it looks!

Oh No-Door Bar, Grille, and Dental Supply Emporium LLC., you have never looked better! That will show that 'em!

~~~~~

Obviously my result isn't perfect and, like your attempts, should be refined further. You should, however, get the right idea and be able to try this on your own. You should try several things when trying to achieve effects on the material before calling it a day. Try different layer styles like overlay or try using multiple layers. You never know how something is going to turn out until you hit the preview button.

I threw this together in a rush before work, but I hope it is helpful enough to do some good. Cheers!

  Edited September 4, 2011 by SimHoTToDDy  

[Francis90b 748]

Well done, Todd!

Quite useful, and clear enough to be understood even after a very hurried reading...those are some really worthy two cents.

  Edited September 4, 2011 by Francis90b  

[nathanthemayor 1,261]

Thanks for the tutorial. It will help me out a lot.....

[nick13 194]

I feel really stupid saying this, but how do you take a screenshot?

[Francis90b 748]

I feel really stupid saying this, but how do you take a screenshot?

Press PrintScreen on your keyboard, then open paint, make a new image and "paste" the result into it.

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Nice tutorial Toddy.

[D'vega 10]

This is valuable information. If I may ask though, what are you using as the base texture? I've been using heavily adjusted galvanized steel textures in an attempt to mimic this sort of roof, but the results (as you already saw) are less than acceptable.

[harishna 847]

Thanks for a simple but very useful tutorial Todd.

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

D'vega: That particular texture is an unspeakable Frankenstein type composite of many many different layers. What I can tell you is that most of the "texture" came from asphalt (like for a road) and maybe a few other grainy concrete bitmaps. Quite a lot of contrast adjustment, clone stamp tool(ing?), and a lot of trial and error went into it.

Thanks guys. I knew people here could use it.

[Jasoncw 11,839]

Off the top of my head the only roof tutorial around was just a post inside someone's BAT thread from a long time ago, so this is great.

Also, I think the last paragraph is really important. Photoshop is a really powerful program, and if you spend some time aside from BATing to learn Photoshop, you'll be able to make whatever you can imagine.

P.S. I may or may not have downloaded the image you started off with.

[Vlasky 1,803]

WOW! I can't believe that you made this! I have been waiting! My oh my! Maybe I'll learn to make textures in PS after all )

Thnx Toddeh, as always, you listen to the heart beat of community and you learn it how to preform CPR on itself lol

  Edited September 5, 2011 by Vlasky  

[madhatter106 3,903]

I'm madhatter106 and I approve of this tutorial.

This is exactly how I do my textures - I rarely tile textures, and treat 99% of mine as 1:1. All of my rooftop textures are done as outlined in this tutorial; a little patience, access to the interwebs and a decent photo-editing software package of your choice, and a lot of trial and error - that's all you need to follow this tutorial and achieve what SimHoTToDDy has shown. The screenshotting makes the whole process easy and "guess-free" when it comes to getting things to line up perfectly.

This tutorial should be standard-viewing for those "I wanna find good textures" threads that pop up now and then. Because we all know (and this tutorial demonstrates it in spades), GOOD TEXTURES ARE MADE, NOT FOUND.

  Edited September 5, 2011 by madhatter106  

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this tutorial. Back in the old days, I used to point people to page 12 of 6459978's "Toronto BATs" thread (which contained a tutorial on exactly the same topic - basically the same tutorial), but sadly this thread is gone. Now we have a worthy replacement! +1 from me.

[metarvo 710]

Since I like to make my own textures for BATs, this tutorial is a must-read for me. Of course, most of my current BATs don't require 1:1 textures, but I'll be sure to look this up for those that do.

[SimFox 800]

All BATs ALWAYS require 1:1 textures. To put it simply there is no conceivable reason why not to do it. It really isn't difficult at all and has HUGE benefits.

As per this tutorial, although it is a totally valid method; I would still strongly suggest to use unwrap UV instead of print-scrining. THe problem of the above described method is that it difficult to be precise with it. Yes things like roof would prolly go fine with it, but, say, you want to place precisely paneling on the walls, say curved ones - there is no way to do it with print-screening.

And logically there is always better to learn as universal tool as possible and Unwrap UV is, no doubt, your Swiss army knife of texturing! You can print your template to png file and bring it into the Photoshop. Use blending modes to drop the black. Make you texture, than back in Max/gmax you can actually adjust your UVs to ready texture to get that perfect fit for every line/seam!

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

You bring up a good point Simfox. You see, I stick to nice boxy things so I have never run into a real need to use UVW unwrap. That's just one more thing I want to learn in MAX one of these days

Require is a bit of an overstatement for some things, but honestly I don't think I would word any less strongly it's importance.

Oh and Jason, believe it or not that is only about 1/5th of the entire bitmap. I needed a generally over sized image for some of the long warehouses I've made, but didn't think it was necessary to include all that cropping for this little tutorial. BAT David Stott and maybe I'll slide you the rest

Thanks again everyone!

[Ceafus 88 1,794]

I am glad you made a thread for this, you are going to help alot of BATers including myself at textureing