Making a box

The objective is to make box in 3Ds max, unwarp it, Go into Photoshop to texture the Diffuse map, and create a specular map, put back into 3Ds max

L: 30cm
W: 24cm
H: 16cm

Set Unit Setup to Metric cm so we work in real life centimetres
On Home grid we change the grid spacing to 2.0cm

Keyboard input units

When the box is added we convert it to an editable poly then chamfer all the edges by 0.4cm

After the Chamfer we loop edges around the box and use connect to add a segment across the selection. 

X = U
Y = V
Z = /W/ = UV Map

Unwrapping an object is like peeling an orange skins

Green lines highlight the object’s edges

UV editor by default flattens the object’s faces

Flatten Mapping will spread out all the faces of the object.

After flattening the faces we use stitch selected to place the sides together

Clicking on a face in 3D view will show up on the UV editor. Faces can be transformed, rotated and scaled

Using the UV checker and adding it to the materials we can check to see if the edges align correctly

Game engine’s slowdowns

>Poly Count
>Texture Size
>Amount of Elements in an Unwrap
>Smoothing groups

Tools, Render UW Template, save as PNG, PNG equals Alpha

Keep Maps named nicely

BOX_ UV - UV
BOX_DM - Diffuse
BOX_SM - Specular
BOX_NM - Normal
BOX_AM - Alpha
BOX_EM – Emissive

Even better is to use Capitals to denote separate words for the title, and an underscore to highlight the format.

salinaRawlesBox_DM

Photoshop

For 3D modelling Photoshop will be used a lot for created our textures.

When making a new document we are given an info box to customize our canvas.

When we are producing something for a common monitor Screen we work with pixels, RGB Colour mode and 72 DPI, when we work with print we use a metric value like Centimetres or Inches, C.M.Y.K with 300 DPI

RGB = Red, Green, Blue
C.M.Y.K = Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (K)

Here we use two Sample images into Photoshop each in their own canvas.
 

The Windows tab shpws the many options that are shown in windows.

The move tool (V) moves the layer or selected items on the layer

The rectangular marque tool allows the user to select a portion of the image/layer and edit it, here I make a selection of the desert and pasted it onto the Flower. Using the feather tool will give it a blurry soft edge.

CTRL D deselects

The lasso tool allows us to make a selection by dragging the cursor to form a selection, The polygon lasso tool does the same but with edges, each edge is form after each click, the magnetic lasso tool tries to predicts the edges against the image.

The Magic wand tool selects a colour in the area click, the quick selection does the same but works with the user dragging over the area and Photoshop will predict what colour the user wishes to select.

The Colour range picks out all of the colours similar according to the user within the layer.

The crop tool will cut away parts of the whole canvas, We can also constrain and change the ratio of what is cropped.

The history window shows all of the actions done by the user and allows us to go back to certain places.

In a new document I open up my UV template and Photoshop immediately shows the transparency, with a layer underneath I add a grey background to show the uv map better

Using Photoshop effects such a Curves and Hue/Saturation we can edit the colours of the images to that match each other