Jeff Patton JeffPatton Location: Lexington, USA Language(s):
English Member Since: August 2002 Last Updated: 14 November 2009 Portfolio Views: 1069039 Chosen as Favorite: 521
jeff thanks for the tutorial, i've seen that before. i think it's great and perfect for what i need to do, however, the reason i think tutorials like this fail for beginners is that they skip over the fundamentals. I can't get past the first step in that tutorial because his geometry is already UVW mapped. And you can bet your bottom dollar it hasn't just simply had a UVW map applied. It's been mapped using unwrap uvw, which is something i have never got my head round or been able to carry out successfully. especially on the object i'm currently trying to texture. i've now decided to texture some suspension forks that have been imported into max using the new connection extension so i'm now dealing with body objects.
so i guess i need to go back a step further
any good suggestions or tuts like that to take me through UVW mapping properly? then i can continue with that link
I feel your pain. UVW mapping is one of those things that just seems far more complex than what it should be (IMHO). Sure, it's pretty cut-n-dry for most non-organic objects like walls. And since a lot of 3ds Max objects have the "generate mapping coordinates" option, that & the new spline mapping seems to make uvw mapping a bit easier....but it still seems like a lot of work to unwrap organic objects.
I've purchased UVW specific training DVD's and they helped a little, but I found it hard to follow along because it's such a mind-numbingly boring topic (for me at least). I enjoy the texture painting phase...but man, I sure hope some genius out there can simplify the UVW unwrapping process for people like me that have some kind of mental block when it comes to the process. :/
Hi! Added you on Facebook. I love your work. Got your tutorial on car rendering at Gnomonology, its great!! If u need a modeler on the future, just contact me! Cheers
Hey Jeff. Thank you for the tip on colour bleed for MR. I have unhidden the hidden shaders but when I load max I now get a missing dll's warning for 4 of the MR promaterials. any idea why this would be? I can see this might be a problem when I put these files on a render farm. Cheers!
Hey Jeff. Thank you for the tip on colour bleed for MR. I have unhidden the hidden shaders but when I load max I now get a missing dll's warning for 4 of the MR promaterials. any idea why this would be? I can see this might be a problem when I put these files on a render farm. Cheers!
Hi jeff , thanx alot for this great blog( my opinion it'ss the most useful place in the world to learn mental ray) ,so i do have a question : In your blog entry (hdr light studio) what was the material you used for the car paint ?
again thanx for your efforts ( i hope my english wasn't so bad)
gsscott50 - In my blog entry on FG color bleed I discussed unhiding the raytype switcher from the production_max.mi file. The ProMaterials have their own .mi files so they are completely separate entities from what I discussed. As such, I have no idea why unhiding something in the production shaders file would throw up an error on your ProMaterials. I've never encountered that one before.
whitedemon - It was a blend material using two A&D materials. The base A&D material was a glossy metal material while the other is a non-glossy, reflective material to simulate the clear coat.
many thanks to you!! 
