Can UV mapping in XSI be done more like texturing in Hammer?

[Naticus]

I’ve gotten back into prop modeling and am reminded of why I keep walking away from it. UV texture mapping is incredibly tedious and cumbersome compared to how it is done for brushes in Hammer with the texture editor.
I’m chalking this up to the fact that I have loads more experience applying textures in Hammer versus texture mapping in XSI.

I’ve got tileable textures on my texture sheet but I can’t just go around my model ctrl clicking polygons and have the tileable portion of my texture sheet connect and repeat throughout the model like it does in Hammer. XSI has a gazillion tools and I’m hoping that I’m overlooking one that will do essentially the same thing that the Hammer texture editor does. Right now positioning groups of polygons over my texture sheet in XSI using the Rotate, Scale and Transform tools is causing horrible alignment and scaling issues.

If there is not a way to apply textures in XSI similar to the Hammer texture editor, could someone point me in the direction of a good tutorial that goes over in great detail the best method to UV unwrapping and positioning in XSI? Thanks!

[Duke Nukem]

Hi Naticus,
to get very well dimensions of the polygons of your model do the following:

1. select your final model
2. add a texture file to it

3. drag and drop a texture file into the XSI window
(i prefer a darkgrey 512*512 pixels or 1024*1024 pixels texture file in .vtf or .tga format (ok, in this case its a png file )
4. select it from "new from source"

5. select unique UVs (polymesh) projection (XSI will now generate groups of surfaces automatically from different angle views, but everything is dimensioned properly)

6. then press "alt + 7" to open the texture editor

7. start comparing by selecting equal surfaces of the model that cant be seen from the same direction and merge them together by selecting the polygon-groups and using the snapping tool.

one side


opposite side


snapped together/gained space on the texture


most times the equal groups just have to be mirrored vertical or horizontal. trying around and using the 3d-view will help you to find fast and good solutions. comparing the surfaces will give you more space on the texture file. after puzzled to a sqaure, select all surfaces and stretch em as big as you can to gain a better quality of your texture.

any questions? pm me, maybe we can get a teamviewer connection if there are still any problems.
duke

[Naticus]

Thanks for this. I will try merging polygon groups together. This should help with the scaling issues and alignment to some extent. I may be contacting you for that teamviewer connection. Thanks for the offer.

[Duke Nukem]

Hey naticus,
ill be back in 2 months. no teamviewer connection till then, sry.
cu