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Tutorials

Environmental Texturing

Environmental texturing in 3ds max

Natural randomness of landforms can add great variety to any game environment or any pre-rendered animation. The downside to this, production-wise, is that texturing such objects effectively can be quite a hassle. UVW layout has always been one of those necessities that artists sigh at, with knowledge of evenings spent inside of the Unwrap UVW editor interface tweaking verts. Getting it done as quickly as possible becomes a priority, and it should be the goal of every artist to find ways to ease the brunt of UV layout as much as possible.

ITT Technical Institute

Tutorials
So Weve got some environmental geometry thats a little on the organic side.. a tough shape to lay out some decent uvs for. Dont sweat it. Well be able to generate a relatively stretch-free texture in a matter of nimutes. This tutorial will look at some of the following tools: the falloff map composite materials Map coordinates rollout: Planar from Object XYZ option The falloff map is an incredibly useful utility map type in 3ds max. It creates a transition from the first color/map slot to the second map slot based on the positions/facing direction of the objects polygons. Notice: The colors in the example: red and blue. The falloff type is set to Towards/Away The Falloff Direction is set to Local X-Axis This translates to the polygons of the object that are facing TOWARDS the objects local X axis (see the objects pivot point) will be colored red, the polys facing away from the X axis will be colored blue. The transition of the falloff map is controlled by a mix curve. The left side represents the Toward(or front) side, the right end is the Away (side) side of the polygon. The curve interface allows you to place more points as well see in the following pages...

Environmental Texturing

ITT Technical Institute

Tutorials
The render is an example of the particular falloff map in the previous example rendered in our materials diffuse channel. You can see that there is a smooth transition from one color to the next. Notice in the viewport capture, the direction that the X axis of the objects pivot is pointing. - the fall off red is projected onto polys facing in the positive x direction(in the direction of the red arrow on the pivot) and the blue projected onto polys in the other direction. For our purposes, well be using the falloff map with black and white as an opacity map, so that the Away parts will be see-through

Environmental Texturing

Since our object is a sort of rocky, natural landform, this is a look at the texture map were going to use for our material.

ITT Technical Institute

Tutorials

Environmental Texturing

The pictures on this page show how the falloff is changed via the mix curve. The vertical axis of the curve graph represents the two colors, Toward at the bottom, Away at the top. The result of the particular curve shape in the upper right gives us the away color on both sides of the object. The image on the left shows the settings for a composite material. This is the kind of material well use to combine our different materials that will overlap eachother. Think of it as a material with layers, like a photoshop image. where the layers are see-through, you see the layers underneath. Well only use three materials for this example, but as many materials as needed could be used. (as many as the composite material will hold, anyways) ITT Technical Institute

Tutorials

Environmental Texturing

The first material we set up is a material that will project down the X axis... The image just above shows the settings for the diffuse map: the rock texture. Note the mapping is set to Planar from Object XYZ. This will project a map along a local axis...Below the offset and Tiling numbers, there is a radio button indicating the plane of projection. Since were projecting along the X axis, the plane that we pick is YZ, the other two letters... The pictures to the left of the text show the settings for the falloff map... Note the Falloff Type as well as the Falloff Direction. The colors remain black and white (the defaults) The shape of the mix curve is of utmost importance. ITT Technical Institute

Tutorials

Environmental Texturing

The second material for the composite is similar... the diffuse map is the same texture, except this time we projected along the Y axis- that is, set the plane of projection to ZX... The falloff map is set for Local Y-Axis for its direction. We set up the mix curve the same way as in material 1.

ITT Technical Institute

Tutorials

Environmental Texturing

The third material continues the trend... the image projected on the Z axis, XY chosen as the plane of projection.. The falloff map used along the Local ZAxis.

ITT Technical Institute

Tutorials

Environmental Texturing
The composite material, containing all three materials should appear similar to the image to the left. The maps are blended together using their materials opacity. The render is the object using the composite material we just set up. Save for the rotational differences (easily fixed in the coordinates rollout of the map) theres barely a noticeable difference. Theres very little stretching, and, best of all, we havnt even touched the UVs! This approach could be baked out to a single map for a game texture.. in that case, the UVs would have to be manipulated. For pre-rendered animations, this piece would almost be good to go... just fixthat rotational problem... Ill leave that up to you guys!

ITT Technical Institute

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