The Chatterbox

ok..first read the object creation tutorial...ta.

When you create your new mesh in milkshape you can export several parts of a mesh together to enable you to seperate them on the uv map which enables you to colour the different parts of a mesh more easily.

For example...

The chair in this image is made up of several parts which I want to colour seperately.

So when I am regrouping the parts in the groups tab I firstly select all of the legs then regroup them as 'legs' the bits I want to be a fabric texture I regroup as 'fabric' and the bits I want wooden are regrouped as 'wood' It doesn't really matter what you call the regroups as long as you know which bits which.

Now we need to go to file/export/wavefront obj and save MAP or whatever you wish to call it.

Open up UVmapper and locate your file.
Click ok on the little poppyup box.
We now need to go to Edit/New UV map/Planar
Select the Y axis and don't split....because I want a good amount of detail on my mesh I am going to leave the map size as it is at 1024.

Now go up to Edit/New UV map/Box

Uncheck split front/back and as before I am going to leave the size as it is.

Now go up to Edit/select/by group

This will bring up a box with the different parts in it....I'm going to select the fabric first

You can see now all of the fabric parts highlighted and surrounded by a transform box thingy...you can grab the edge of this box and reduce the size of your fabric and move it out of the way while you sort out the other parts.

You can repeat this process for all the other parts
As the legs are far away from each other I am going to hold down my left mouse button and drag a box around one of them

I can then move that leg over towards the others
and repeat for each leg until happy. Notice that I have placed all of the ends of the legs in one pile, you can do this for other parts to colour them with the same bit of texture.

You can now re-arrange your map making parts smaller/larger depending on how detailed you want the texture on them until you end up with something like this...

When happy you can save the map and the texture file and close UV Mapper

Go back into Milkshape and select File/New, click ok when the box thing pops up, you do not need to save. Import your texture map.

Go to Edit/select all and then regroup your pieces as in the meshing tutorial, rename to orignal mesh name and export/wavefront obj over your cloned mesh as in the meshing tutorial.

You can now import your mesh into SimPE and texture your map as you wish.

Everything else is the same as the meshing tutorial.

Thanks Ali, I'm going to try uv mapper again, I couldn't get a texture to work for me with it, I've been using lith unwrap. a_bigteeth

I think it's fantastic that you've done these tutes, Ali. They'll be here for if any of us decide to take up meshing along with you and Suze.

No problemo a_bigteeth

Thank you Ali for all these tutorials. a_bigteeth

I would love to try it again when I can find the time.

Thanks for your effort, Ali! Some day soon I'm going to be brave enough to attempt all of this.

Ali,
how would you, (or loophole lil since she makes an appearance in the pics) feel about me putting these together and packaging for SD so others have another meshing alternative? Feel free to say no if you want. Very Happy

I have no objections but my tutroials aren't the best ever written, if you want to though feel free a_bigteeth

It's at least another alternative. I get several questions a day in the sites email about how to mesh, and I always give the MTS2 tutorial, but they are always asking me for more. LOL