How to hide mountpoints and help with UV Mapping

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Tharn
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How to hide mountpoints and help with UV Mapping

Post by Tharn »

So since the license plate and decals are taken care of, now I moved on into UV mapping for the car's vinyls and I need to hide the mountpoints of the model to start with it. I need all those cubes gone for now, how do I do that?

And this is the debug file I need to UV map for the vinyls. I added it as a texture and I need to have it displayed over the carskin1 material to start with the UV mapping and match the car's views to it. So how do I do that?
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Oleg
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Re: How to hide mountpoints and help with UV Mapping

Post by Oleg »

you can hide objects in hierarchy view by toggling off squares next to object name.

to see texture on a model and to uv-map it, you need to assign this texture onto material first. the material that associated object uses. If you have imported this model from some file, it is likely you need to convert associated material(s) to "Shader Material" first. Then assign shader with "Diffuse" on it. As the simplest - assign "Diffuse+Spec" shader, it will be ok.

Conversion to "Shader material" and shader assignment is down in Materials editor with Double-click on left-side of browser over "Shader Material" and over "Diffuse+Spec" respectively. This conversion/assignment is applied to selected material tiles on the right side, so multiple materials could be converted and assigned "Diffuse" shader.

Once material is configured as above, material's properties window will have "DETAIL" rollup page - this is a texture slot for Diffuse texture. Assign there your texture. Then follow up to texture mapping.

Mind to check youtube videos on the above topic and related to uv-mapping, I will not explain it here.
Tharn
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Re: How to hide mountpoints and help with UV Mapping

Post by Tharn »

Oleg wrote: Sat Nov 26, 2022 8:45 am you can hide objects in hierarchy view by toggling off squares next to object name.
Oh yes, I knew this, just thought it didn't apply to mountpoints
to see texture on a model and to uv-map it, you need to assign this texture onto material first. the material that associated object uses. If you have imported this model from some file, it is likely you need to convert associated material(s) to "Shader Material" first. Then assign shader with "Diffuse" on it. As the simplest - assign "Diffuse+Spec" shader, it will be ok.
Yes, material was already converted to shader. What I needed to know was how to assign the shader/texture to the material because the video I was watching used an older version of zmodeler so I didn't know how to make it work with zmodeler3
Once material is configured as above, material's properties window will have "DETAIL" rollup page - this is a texture slot for Diffuse texture. Assign there your texture. Then follow up to texture mapping.
Yes, it worked, I see the debug file displayed over the carskin1 material I needed to see
Mind to check youtube videos on the above topic and related to uv-mapping, I will not explain it here.
Of course, I am watching some videos but not everything is the same as in zmodeler3 which I am using and the specific help I needed was with how to make the texture display over the required material, not how to actually UV map
Tharn
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Re: How to hide mountpoints and help with UV Mapping

Post by Tharn »

But now I have an issue, I am unable to see the entirety of the debug file on the model when using the 3D view for some reason and it looks complete when using 'perspective' view although I am able to rotate the model like in 3D view, do you know why?
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Re: How to hide mountpoints and help with UV Mapping

Post by Oleg »

perspective view will act like 3D when you hold the Alt key.
using { alt+shift+right mouse button+moving mouse up/down } will change camera's lens (field of view) so you can zoom in close without model being clipped/disappear near the viewpoint.
Tharn
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Re: How to hide mountpoints and help with UV Mapping

Post by Tharn »

Thank you.
Tharn
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Re: How to hide mountpoints and help with UV Mapping

Post by Tharn »

So I watched this video and I tried doing what it says https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l3G55ufr2c but there's something I must be doing wrong although I'm not sure what it is.

I need to uv map all parts of the model that use the carskin1 material with the unwrapping tool so I can freely position each object where it needs to be in the debug file I am using as texture and I select all parts by material, then go to uv mapper window and the material/texture are correct but only kit00_body_E shows up in the objects window. That's not the only part using the carskin1 material, how do I get all objects to show up? No matter what I do, it's only kit00_body_E that shows up. and I can uv map all objects at once right? I don't have to map all bodykits one by one, I hope? Here's a video

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Re: How to hide mountpoints and help with UV Mapping

Post by Oleg »

"generate new" and "unwrap" is very unlikely the proper method for vehicle mapping. it is more common for unwrapping of objects with uniform tiled textures like skin, bark, leather/fabrics and like this. You are likely want to get straight and proper mapping for side, hood, roof front and rear of the vehicle (so, for example, you can paint later some livery). In such a case, "Generate new" + "From viewport XY" is more preferable one.

If you want to uv-map several objects at a time, you need to switch several objects to polygons level first. select several objects, press '3', hover any of selected and click on it. All selected objects will switch to poly level (and you will not see grey/dimmed objects like in the side view on your video). From this moment on, proceed with Select\By material to make a selection across several objects... in general, when several objects are switch to sub-level (vertices, polygons), ZModeler will perform actions on these objects rather than on just one object. Thus, every tool (if possible) will act on all the objects switched to sub-level.

One more remark. At this point I advise to check the video of UV-mapping car body (it could be a video for ZModeler2, as the process is identical). The idea is to select polygons for body side first, make an "inplace detach" (when selected polygons are detached from the rest of geometry but do not create new object), uv-mapping them with "Generate New" + "From viewport XY" and using Side view; then select top polygons of hood, roof, trunk and do the same (detach, edituv+generate new in Top view), then do the same for front of the vehicle with detach, generate new in "Front" viewport.

On the other hand, this is certainly the loaded model from some game (some NFS series) and the object is likely to have UV mapping already. In this case, using "Generate new" in "Edit UV" is a bad idea. Use "Keep old mapping" instead, it will give you the mapping that already done and it is still editable.
Tharn
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Re: How to hide mountpoints and help with UV Mapping

Post by Tharn »

Yes I am following several tutorials on converting cars for need for speed but they are done on zmodeler1 and it's hard to guess what I have to do in zmodeler3, that's why I ask you so much, I'm sorry
Tharn
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Re: How to hide mountpoints and help with UV Mapping

Post by Tharn »

I'm trying to do the uv mapping as shown in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TISqiA1nzrs using 'keep old mapping' and 'from viewpoint xy' as you suggested and this is what I get

it looks like the one in the video and I am trying to break apart every part (top, right, left, front and rear) as done in the video so I can place them where they should be in the debug texture but I haven't been able to figure out how to do it on zmodeler3. I go on polygon mode and select a quadrant of polygons and they move but the other parts (for exmaple kit01_body_A, B, C and D) stay in place and only kit01_body_E moves. How do I move the entirety of the rear side for example?

I also tried doing it with the 'inplace detach' method you suggested but it seems it's only viable with lower polygons parts and I have too many polygons for too many different parts, it's a mess to try to detach the right polygons or maybe I'm doing it wrong? I also watched this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0iOrdChlqo that does what you were saying but it's only done with a single part for the truck's cabin. I need to uv map a lot of parts at the same time and it seems the method from the first video works best for this case. Just need to know a way how to separate all top, right, left, front and rear from each other correctly.
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