Expert: Andre Hickman - 1/18/2006

Question
dear andre,

 recently I downloaded a low polygon man in max
format with one jpeg file as material.

 I see the man in max is a single mesh with one
material with diffuse map as jpeg. the jpg file
is having all the map as pieces of shirt, pant,
heads, etc,. How this type of map is applied.
If i apply to a single box it is not at all right.
If i apply to the man supplied it show exactly
the texture is accurate all over the body.

 I want to know what is the technique in applying
such a map.

thanking you,


Answer
Hey Syed,

I couldn't answer that fully without seeing the mesh and the texture map, but chances are it is basically done with an UV Unwrap modifier.  It is a way to take a mesh, and sort of "rip it on a seem" and lay it flat on a 2D plane, from there the flattened mesh can be exported as a .jpg or other image file, and painted over in a picture editing program,such as Adobe Photoshop.  Here is a link that has some pictures that show what I am referring to.

http://www.anticz.com/texture.htm

One would have to apply a UV map to their mesh (i.e. either spherical, cylindrical, or planar, etc.) then do a UV unwrap.  When applying the texture after doing a paint job, you would apply it in the diffuse channel as a spherical, cylindrical, etc. map that corresponds to the way that it was UV mapped.  With this method, you can create, things like glossy lips on a head mesh using the specular slot, and bumps for wrinkles etc. using the bumpmap, by simply painting them in place on the 2D layout of the mesh...you could even create a video animated texture like a specular and bump map, that made a tear roll down the face, leaving a glossy trail, or some other creative special effect.

Here is a tutorial that I found, but you can probably find others as well by doing a search on "3d Max Texture tutorial"

http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials/max/joanofarc/tex_clothing2.asp

Cheers,
Andre'