How to change some surface properties?

Blind Owl

Thinking it might be handy to have a cube with different surfaces—for instance to use as a shadow box with opaque sides and an emissive or transparent top—I created one in DS and used the Geometry Editor to turn each of the 6 faces into a separate material zone.

This works fine if I apply shaders to the surfaces, but if I use an image, only 1/4 of it appears. Applying the same image to other surfaces...well, you can see the result: a sort of wrap-around effect that doesn't quite wrap around.

I'm wondering why this happens, and if there's a way to edit/alter the surface properties so that an entire (i.e. complete and separate) image appears on each surface I apply it to.

NorthOf45

You may be able to create different material zones, but the UV mapping covers the whole cube primitive in a pre-determined manner. With the Surface Selection tool active click on the cube and change the viewport to UV View (or a handy use of the auxiliary viewport so that you can see both at the same time). View by Node will show you how the faces are mapped on a 2x3 grid (don't know exactly which face goes where). Change to View by Materials, click on a face and you will see which part of the mapping will be used for your new surfaces. If you want the whole picture on the face, it must align with that outline. Click each face to see which area it will use. Not sure how well it will work using vertical/horizontal tile/offset. I was about to try that and Studio crashed on me 

Here's a cube primitive by Node, and by Material (one face defined as a new Surface).

Blind Owl

UV map! Of course! (smacks self)

I'm not hip on 3D modelling—Tinkercad is about my speed, just barely—and didn't even think of it.

Thanks, NorthOf45!

Syrus_Dante

The default DS primitive cube got an awful UV map, I mean this is nothing of beeing useful.

You can try work around that like NorthOf45 saied with the Tiling and Offset values in the Surface pane in Edit mode.

Otherwise for your purpose its best to have all sides of the cube in the UV layout stacked on top of eachother with the exact same dimensions and 1:1 aspect ratio - not stretched like the original.

If you don't like or can't use an editor for creating your UVs there are some scripts from mCasual that can help you.

• https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts3/mcjboxuv
• https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjsphericaluv
• https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjcylindricaluv
• https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjplanaruv

Blind Owl

I should make a habit of checking mcasual's site regularly! Thanks for pointing those out. 

kenshaw011267

It's also very easy to DIY a cube out of plane primitives. Then each will have its own UV map.

Blind Owl

kenshaw011267 said:

It's also very easy to DIY a cube out of plane primitives. Then each will have its own UV map.

Yes, and you get to choose the orientation of each face of the cube. The only downside is that you can only scale it as a unit; if you change the X, Y, or Z scales, the cube flies apart. Apart from that, it works fine.

kenshaw011267

Blind Owl said:

kenshaw011267 said:

It's also very easy to DIY a cube out of plane primitives. Then each will have its own UV map.

Yes, and you get to choose the orientation of each face of the cube. The only downside is that you can only scale it as a unit; if you change the X, Y, or Z scales, the cube flies apart. Apart from that, it works fine.

True but when I want something besides a cube I scale the pieces individually then parent them together afterwards.

fastbike1

@Blind Owl "Yes, and you get to choose the orientation of each face of the cube. The only downside is that you can only scale it as a unit; if you change the X, Y, or Z scales, the cube flies apart. Apart from that, it works fine."

That doesn't happen for me. I can scale each axis of a primitive cube separately.

Syrus_Dante

Well if you want to have your "cube made out of planes" act like a single object just make it a single object with once exporting it as OBJ, then importing it back with same scaling preset.

The scripts from Mcasual work the same to alter the UVs. The simple plane UVs with full size textures for each side stays the same by this you only need to have a seperate surface group for each face if you want to have a seperate texture applied to it.

You need to use the DS Geometry Editor in order to do that. But this is an easy task just select the face on the cube with the red circle mouse cursor (Drag Selection mode). Then open up the Tool Settings pane and right click on Surfaces I once made a screenshot of this menu entry Create Surfaces from Selected.

Blind Owl

fastbike1 said:

@Blind Owl "Yes, and you get to choose the orientation of each face of the cube. The only downside is that you can only scale it as a unit; if you change the X, Y, or Z scales, the cube flies apart. Apart from that, it works fine."

That doesn't happen for me. I can scale each axis of a primitive cube separately.

A cube primitive scales in any axis, but I was referring to a cube built up of planes. Even with a common parent (e.g. the bottom or a null), it only scales as a unit.

But @Syrus_Dante's suggestion—exporting the built-up cube, re-importing it, and using the Geometry Editor to assign a surface to each face—worked like a damn.

bradvinchattle

I created a plane with the image I wanted and then attached it to the side of a cube.