Another GMAX Question

[acourt]

Gents,

Okay. I've got a problem. I've read several tutorials, and tried several different techniques. None seem to work.

How do I go about putting a texture onto a GMAX building?! I'm trying to select the front face of a terminal building and place one texture on it. Unfortunately, whatever I do, the texture is applied to the entire structure. Mayday!

The structure is made of a single box.

Al

[Tom/CalClassic]

Hi,

Here is how we create and then texture a building. The key thing is that once you create the box, you need to convert it to Editable Mesh by either:
a. Adding an Edit Mesh Modifier
b. Adding a Convert to Mesh modifier
c. Using the Convert To Mesh command in the popup menu (right click the active window).

Here is how we do it from the start:

Place the textures you create in the same folder as where you save the GMAX file, in Millions of colors format. PSD or JPG files also work.

Basically, the buildings are produced by:

Make sure that your system units are set to Meters. You can set the Display units to anything you like. I use Decimal Feet. This can be changed at any time without problems (unlike the System Unit). There are 3.281 feet in a meter.

First, create a Material.

1. Press the Red Ball at the top right, and click the New Button.
2. Choose Standard
3. Click the green Maps bar (usually at the bottom of the box)
4. Click on the None button for the Diffuse Color
5. Double click the black Bitmap box
6. Browse to your day texture, click on it, click Open
7. Click the little blue and white cube to the right of the name; this will be the bitmap that is displayed on the object in GMAX
8. Click the little lock to the right of the None button, and then click the None button for the Ambient Color
9. Do # 5 and 6 again, but choose your night texture instead
10. With the object to be textured selected, click the Apply button.
11. Click the red X to close the Material box.

Now build your building:

1. Create a Box with the number of sections needed for each change of height and width. Make the box the smallest dimension of the building in width and height.
2. Add an Edit Mesh Modifier to the stack. Then click the little black plus sign next to it and choose Polygon mode. Select the polygons for a section of the building that should be higher or wider. Do this to the largest areas first, and then the smaller areas last. For example, if half the building is one story and half two story, and it also has a wider part that is only one eighth of the building, make the building taller first, and then make it wider. Saves time and polygons that way.
3. In the Extrude box, type in the length it should be higher/wider. Press Enter.
4. Repeat #2 and #3 until the building is the shape you want.
5. Select all the polygons for the roof
6. Press the Detach Button, and rename the roof.
7. Texture the main building
a. Texture the main face of the building
i. Set the view so the main face is facing you.
ii. Apply the Material you created above that uses the desired texture (and LM texture) - click the red ball and then press the Apply button with your building selected.
iii. Add a UVW Map modifier to the stack.
iv. Press the View Align button. Press the Bitmap Fit button, select the texture, click OK.
v. Add a UVW Unwrap Modifier to the stack
vi. Press the Edit button. Select all the points by dragging across the screen.
vii. Use the Move and Uniform Scale modes to move the points into the proper location on the bitmap.
viii. Use the Non-Uniform Scale mode or other technique to get the points to fit perfectly. It's best to leave a little of the texture OUTSIDE the points, to allow for mip mapping wrap around (i.e. FS will use a few pixels OUTSIDE the points when mip mapping).
ix. Click the red X to close the UVW Edit box.
b. Add a Select Mesh Modifier and choose Polygon, select the next polygons to texture (i.e. the side of the building, or the back).
c. Repeat the texturing (step a) for these polygons
d. Repeat b and c for all sides of the building. (Note that the front and back, or two sides of the building can be textured at the same time, as long as they can be mirror images of each other - saves time).
8. Select the roof part. Create a new material for the roof. Click the red ball and click the New button. Repeat the instructions at the top. We try to use the default textures for the roof to save on frame rate and zip file size. They are called "roofn.bmp" and "tileroofn.bmp", where n is a number. They are located in your main FS2004 TEXTURE folder. There is no night texture. Apply this material to your roof. Finally repeat step 7a to texture the roof, but set the two UVW Map sizes to about 3-6 ft, and do not use the UVW Unwrap modifier.
9. Add any details like fences, overhangs, or railings. Texture these. If you use a DXT1 with alpha texture, portions of the part can be made transparent, saving polygons and frame rate (i.e. a single polygon can make a complex railing). Do this by creating a black/white alpha channel (black = transparent). Otherwise we just use 256 color BMP files.

Note that often (like with the fingers of the terminal) I use a small part of a texture for a long building, and let it "tile" across the building (i.e. it is used many times automatically). That way you can use a small texture for a long building. This texture fragment must stretch all the way across the texture, but need not stretch from top to bottom.

Hope this helps,

[acourt]

Thanks, Tom. I think I see what I was missing. I'll try it and let you know how it goes.

Al

[Tom/CalClassic]

PS. The selection of various polygons in a model is made much easier (for me) if you right click on the name Perspective in the bottom right window (assuming you have that window in that view) and select Configure at the bottom of the popup menu. Then check the box Shade Selected Faces.

Hope this helps,