Difference between revisions of "Blender/Custom Sword"
→Getting Your Sword Ready to Export: The UV Map
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You can use more vertices and different scaling to create different blade shapes, too, but I’m not going into that here. Just consider the possibilities, and I hope you find them as much fun as I do. | You can use more vertices and different scaling to create different blade shapes, too, but I’m not going into that here. Just consider the possibilities, and I hope you find them as much fun as I do. | ||
=Getting Your Sword Ready to Export: The UV Map= | |||
Now you need to be able to see the UV window, so divide your buttons window into two. You can do this by holding the mouse cursor over the line between the 3d window and the buttons window and right-clicking, then selecting an option. You now have two little buttons windows. Click the little button in the left one that looks like it has a grid on it, then select “UV Image Editor” instead of “buttons.” You should now see a blank grid, because we haven’t changed the main screen to UV Select mode yet! Go up and click on the button where it now says “edit mode” and change to “UV Face Select” mode. Press “a” to select everything. Your mesh should now look like it’s covered with pink facets. If some of them look transparent, the normals are facing the wrong way, and you need to go back to edit mode and fix them per the previous section’s remarks. | Now you need to be able to see the UV window, so divide your buttons window into two. You can do this by holding the mouse cursor over the line between the 3d window and the buttons window and right-clicking, then selecting an option. You now have two little buttons windows. Click the little button in the left one that looks like it has a grid on it, then select “UV Image Editor” instead of “buttons.” You should now see a blank grid, because we haven’t changed the main screen to UV Select mode yet! Go up and click on the button where it now says “edit mode” and change to “UV Face Select” mode. Press “a” to select everything. Your mesh should now look like it’s covered with pink facets. If some of them look transparent, the normals are facing the wrong way, and you need to go back to edit mode and fix them per the previous section’s remarks. | ||
==The UV Map: Copout or "Every Other Modeling Tutorial in Existence" Method== | |||
But if that’s not a problem, you’re ready to unwrap. Click on “UVs” in the UV Image Editor buttons, then select “unwrap.” | |||
Vertices and faces can be selected and moved in the UV Editor just like in the main window, but they’ll only affect the UV map and they only move in two dimensions. I suggest moving the vertices around so that the faces of the sword’s blade are together and don’t overlap anything. This will make texturing easier. Eventually you’ll want a UV map where all the faces are lined up and connected only where the real faces are connected, but that’s a lot of clicking and dragging I | Yikes! Odds are that you’ve got a very bizarre-looking thing in the UV Editor window now. This is what happens when the computer unwraps all those pink facets into two dimensions. Vertices and faces can be selected and moved in the UV Editor just like in the main window, but they’ll only affect the UV map and they only move in two dimensions. I suggest moving the vertices around so that the faces of the sword’s blade are together and don’t overlap anything. This will make texturing easier. Eventually you’ll want a UV map where all the faces are lined up and connected only where the real faces are connected, but that’s a lot of clicking and dragging. | ||
You can leave it this way (if the sword will be all one color, which seems unlikely), you can try to move the faces around until they make sense, or you can do the following. | |||
First, press ctrl-z to undo the crazy map. | |||
==The UV Map: Slightly Harder But Actually Working Method== | |||
You can tell which face is on which part of the UV Map by pressing “a” in the main window to deselect all the faces, then clicking just one face to make it turn pink. That face will now appear by itself in the UV window. Since it's not unwrapped, it will look like just a plain blue square. Try selecting just one row of the faces on just the blade (remember, hold down "shift" and click to select more than one face). Then press "unwrap" in the UV dropdown menu. Now just those faces appear on the UV map screen. Select them all - you can select vertices on the UV screen just like on the main screen - and move them off to one side. Now repeat with the row RIGHT NEXT TO THOSE. | |||
Select both of those rows. See? They should come close to lining up on the UV screen. Drag the vertices around until they do. You want them touching vertex to vertex, because otherwise there will be odd overlaps in the texture. Ideally you want them to be rectangular, because texturing will be easier that way. That's why the UV screen has a nice grid on it. You can move vertices in just X or just Y on the UV screen by selecting them and typing "g-x" or "g-y." | |||
Do this with all of the rows in the blade part of your sword. You didn't know it, but using extrusion made this part much easier, because more of the faces are the same size. See? I tell you these things for a reason. ;) | |||
Now, this is a part where it can actually be useful to add an image in Blender. Next to the UV menu there should be a dropdown that says "image." Click that and then "open." Here is where you open a random .jpeg image (it can't be a .dds) from anywhere on your computer. It doesn't matter what, because it's only in Blender and won't be on the final product. Once you've opened that, go to the little square up above that shows a solid little cube with odd things sticking off it. Clicking that will bring up a list that says things like "solid," "wireframe," "textured," etc. Click on "textured." Now your random jpeg shows up on the blade, but only the blade, because that's what you've UV mapped so far. Make sure the image is continuous and doesn't seem to jump around from face to face. If it does, you have something next to the wrong thing and you need to move faces around and fix it. | |||
If not, you're home free and you can move on to UV map the hilt. This won't be as easy, but it's still much easier than if we hadn't used extrusion. This part won't need to be square, but it will need to be the shape of whatever texture you eventually plan to put on it. If you want to, you could select the reference sword in object mode and look at it under UV face select to get a vague idea of one way to arrange this. | |||
Remember: it's possible to drag parts of the UV map off the grid in the UV screen. This can be useful while you're actually mapping, but everything has to fit back onto that grid. This means you might have to shrink and move things around. That's why the textures in the actual game look so odd - they're from UV maps. If you want, you might look at a game texture of a sword in GIMP or another image program to see how Bethesda did their mapping. If you want exactly the same part of a texture on a given part of the mesh, you can actually lay those parts of the UV map right over one another(they'll need to line up vertex for vertex). Bethesda did this with blades and hilts quite a lot. It's why their textures usually seem to have only half a hilt on them. | |||
Once your UV map is done, go to UV-save UV face layout. A screen will pop up that allows you to choose the directory in which to save a .tga of the UV map. It doesn't matter where you put it, as long as you can find it later. I always put mine in textures. They're not hard to locate, since the names are generally rather odd-looking. This is what you'll use to make a new texture that will actually fit your new mesh. | |||
''Helpful warning: Occasionally in Blender I've seen a glitch wherein Blender outputs a blank .tga file with nothing in it instead of the real UV map. If that happens, keep trying. Sometimes you'll need to change the name of your object (from "sphere" or whatever the default name was in Blender down in the edit screen). Sometimes this will also happen if you try to change the strange name Blender gives the UV map before you save it.'' | |||
Good job! I know that seemed time-consuming, but you'll thank me when you have to make the texture. Trust me on this. There is nothing more frustrating than to make a working mesh that looks lovely in Blender and discover you can only make it look hideous in-game. | |||
==Getting Your Sword Ready to Export: Material and Texture== | ==Getting Your Sword Ready to Export: Material and Texture== | ||