Trying to texture a figure as one thing

Oso3D

As folks may have seen from my various stone giants in Commons, I've been trying to work out how to apply a texture to an entire figure, stuff like 'mossy rock' or cracked rock or whatever.

The problem I've run into is that, obviously, seams look terrible (particularly with the displacement I use). I found that decals work great for projecting over an entire figure... eeeexcept they don't use displacement, which doesn't work for the stuff I'm trying to pull off.

So I've contemplated exporting the figure as an obj and somehow munging the UV map into something mostly seamless, except UVMapper doesn't seem to produce anything useful.

 

I have access to Blender (though I can barely make heads or tails of it), Carrara, and Bryce. I want to render in Iray.

Any options using these apps or anything else that's free (or, I suppose, <$100 if it'll work really well)

 

Richard Haseltine

One option would be to do a planar projection of the whole mesh, then relax it a bit (because otherwise the edges, which are at an angle to the plane used, will be very squashed) while maintaining the border. Because it was a planar projection the seams will match, and the whole mesh will be on a single map. The downsides are that it's a wasteful mapping (lots of white space, though you could bend the arms down before mapping) and that the seam around the meeting point will act as mirrors (which may be obvious in side views).

Oso3D

I've tried using UV mapper to do planar and other projections. They look pretty bad, heh. Though if I could project from the same orientation as the camera, that might work... ... not sure if I can DO that, but it's a thought. (I suspect that's roughly how Shades of Life 3dl shader works -- projecting based on camera view. Might be wrong)

Richard Haseltine

Yes, Shades of Life does project from the camera. You should be able to do a planar projection from the current view as well as the orthogonal axes, I would expect - modo allows it.

Oso3D

Just killing me that Iray Decals don't do Displacement, because that would have been perfect. Hrm.

Richard: Do you know if Carrara can do that? And, if not, any free applications?

Edit: Oh ho, UVMapper CAN do that. Rotate. Duh.