Texture size limit

[archvilell]

I think that there is a limit as to the size of texture I can put on stuff, but I'm not sure what it is. Any thoughts?

I found a way to model my shotgun pretty easily; so easily in fact it is probably illegal in some way and HL2 will hate me for it.

I selected my model, Get - Property - Texture Projection - YZ.

This laid the polygons in a sideways manner so it is really easy to fit them to my gun. There has to be something wrong with this. I used a crappy picture just to see if it would work, and it works great. It applies the texture to it, and all appears well.

Funny, though. I won't be happy until I do the same thing by doing it the long, hard, and time-consuming way. Unless this is the way. Then I'd be really happy.

- 10 minutes later -

I've got some photos, but they aren't on one image. So I photoshopped them into a single 1600 by 1200 .tga file. But now I can't take apart the polygons to lay them on their respective sections. Am I not allowed to do this? If so, how do I get a really long image onto a square without wasting a ton of space and losing detail?

- Another 10 minutes later -

Crap, I'm losing hope on this "take pictures of the gun then slap it on" deal. I can't break the image so I can set them on the right sections; I can fit the whole gun on a 1600 x 1200 rectangle without losing nice detail. Now I can't get the texture to stay showing when I close the texture editor (which I don't know if it's supposed to do, and if it is, if the texture stays on when I save).

Can anyone steer me back on course again?

-Archvilell

 

[thereisaspoon]

all texutres dimensions must be powers of 2. eg 2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048. anything above 1024 is absolutley way way way too much.

 

[archvilell]

Okay thanks. Any ideas on the other problems I'm having?

 

[Mr-Fusion]

Generally, it's a very bad idea to use photo textures. Personally i've never seen a good looking gun with photo textures, the best ones are the ones with user made textures.

tutorials at sourceblog.net

 

[thereisaspoon]

when u open the texture editor, the model will automaticaly take on the background clip thats used in the editor. Once you close it, the shader reverts back to teh original. If u want a image, u have to go in the rendering menu (press 3), on the side go to Shader under Modify title, then click the plug button and pick image, then use the clip that u have already. Keep in mind the texture u have wont work in hl2 or any game for that matter.

 

[short recoil]

Yeah there is no engine limit, just hardware limit.
you *can* do 2048x2048 but that is just insane.
I have never used anything over 512x512 so far.

 

[archvilell]

Keep in mind the texture u have wont work in hl2 or any game for that matter.

Why won't they? Is it the image I'm using or the method?

I am starting to agree that photo skins don't look good. The ones I took look horrible. That being the case, I now have to learn how to draw stuff and make it cool looking with Photoshop. I checked out SourceBlog.net, but they didn't have any UV Mapping tutorials for XSI. Although, they had some texture tutorials that I'll look into later (gotta do trig now ).

 

[Sanada]

Yeah there is no engine limit, just hardware limit.
you *can* do 2048x2048 but that is just insane.
I have never used anything over 512x512 so far.

CS:S uses quite a few 2048x2048 textures. Both the new CT and T models use that size and the APC on de_piranese or whatever it's called.

They use a bit less in HL2, probably so it could be played on older PCs. :|

...and 2048x2048 is the engine limit too.

 

[thereisaspoon]

CS:S uses quite a few 2048x2048 textures. Both the new CT and T models use that size and the APC on de_piranese or whatever it's called.

They use a bit less in HL2, probably so it could be played on older PCs. :|

...and 2048x2048 is the engine limit too.

i hope you're joking.

and your texture wont work if its 1600x1200
you NEED it to be a power of 2, eg 1024x512 256x512 512x512

 

[archvilell]

So how do I unwrap the model so I get a picture to paint on? I can't find any tutorials on that. If I go to Get - Property - Texture Projection - YZ it gives me this:



This looks like it would work. The shotgun pic as the background helped me model it. It has nothing to do with the texture. I wanted to see if that would work, so I did go ahead and try to move the polygons on top of the picture, and it worked, but the picture sucked. So I planned on taking better photos then putting them on but it still sucked (and like you guys said, it probably would never work). So I'm at a loss of how to get an unwrapped image to paint on. Any ideas?

 

[Sanada]

i hope you're joking.

and your texture wont work if its 1600x1200
you NEED it to be a power of 2, eg 1024x512 256x512 512x512

Nope

http://img64.echo.cx/img64/375/cturban6tf.jpg

 

[archvilell]

As much as I hate bumping, I have a feeling this thread will die if I don't post.

Can anyone tell me how to unwrap in XSI?

 

[Ames]

http://www.hl2w0rld.com/wiki/index.php/XSI_Texturing_Tutorial

You know what to change.

 

[archvilell]

It says it "could not be found. Please check the link and try again."

Thanks for your quick reply though.

-----------

Edit: 10min later

Idiot Alert: One found. Me.

I got it
Nevermind.

Thanks.

-----------

This tutorial doesn't say how or when to make the texture that one will use. Does that mean that I make my texture .tga file before I texture it? I've heard some people say that it is pretty easy to unwrap the model, then paint over the polygons, rather than keep the texture and move the polygons. Is there two different ways or am I just crazy?

(Thanks for the link though. Once I get a texture, I'll be sure to follow it.)

-Archvilell

 

[Cubik]

I always, ALWAYS unwarp my models first. You could do it the other way around but that feels very akward to me.

 

[thereisaspoon]

how it works:
make model
unwrap it
use the unwrap flats as a stencil to paint textures.

 

[archvilell]

Okay, but how do I unwrap it?

I have another question. I have two pieces to the model, the pump (which moves) and the rest of the gun. Will I need two textures?