"Freezing" a Global Coordinate-based map into a local one?

[Juanxer]

I think this was covered in some other thread but I can't seem to find it, so…

I am building a puzzle of an Euro banknote. In order to texture the puzzle pieces, I've created an UberShape with its size equal to the assembled puzzle, mapped the Euro texture onto it in World Coordinate mode, and pasted it to the puzzle pieces following Ian's procedure here.

Now, I'd need to turn the pieces's maps from World Coordinate mode to local so that the texture stays in place while the pieces fly around. I think there was some kind of export-reimport trick for that. Could anyone lend me a hand? :)

[RichardJoly]

Create UV will probably resolve your problem, that's what I used for a Puzzle project I made couple years ago.

http://www.eias3d.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=521&highlight=createUV

There was also the trick of copying the map from the MATERIAL BALL of the group with the full image and pasting individually in the MATERIAL BALL of each puzzle piece. With more than 20 pieces, it soon becomes a drag...

[Juanxer]

That's the issue: that copy-paste trick doesn't seem to be working for me unless I set the map to World Coordinate. I get different results if I paste on the ball instead of on the Project Window item, none of them correct. :huh:

(I'll try that plugin and see what happens. Thanks)

[Juanxer]

OK, playing with CreateUV: I get to map the texture across the puzzle pieces correctly. What I don't quite get is what I must do for the pieces to retain their bit of texture in place so that I can animate them around (I'm afraid the plugin instructions are a bit too spartan). I see an export-reimport is recommended, but still I don't know what I am doing or why, and so I'm lost :-/.

(Sorry to be so dense, but I have managed to avoid working with UVs in EIAS until now, so this is fairly foreign to me)

[Diego]

Hola Juanxer,

I usually solve this problem by applying the texture in the source modeling program (C4D or Zbrush) and exporting the .obj with UV's. Then importing in EIAS via Obj2toFact .

If the pieces don't retain their bit of textures in place that means no active Uv's on the model. Generally you have FIRST to check the model UV box in EIAS and then load textures.

Hope this help,

Diego

[RichardJoly]

I don't understand why you can't animate. I tried the plugin and it seems to work OK even without export-import. Check out my project to see my settings. If it doesn't work, please send a copy of your project so I can have a look at it.

CreateUV.mov

CreateUV.zip

[gyroo]

I think this was the older thread you were looking for....

http://www.eias3d.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=483

[Juanxer]

Richard, thank you for your sample project. Even if I finally did mine by aligning the textures manually (there wasn't so many puzzle pieces), I still wanted to know how to solve this for future reference. Certainly, yours animates correctly in my EIAS setup. I'll study it to see what I was doing wrong.

Also, thank you Gyro for the linkie. :)

[HMeyers]

Richard …

 

Hal Meyers here - I hope you are well … I am in the process of creating a: Kaleidocycle. Currently just doing a rough test, but, I am running into NUMEROUS issues. However … for the test my first thing is to - as the gentleman above - map one large texture on top of my model so that each segment gets their portion. With that said - I made a wall of cubes … to test the Create UV plug-in that I downloaded and installed (thank you for that info).

 

– and - 

 

I also downloaded your puzzle … to study it … 

 

- and - 

 

after doing everything you said, and copying the settings - I get my blocks to perfectly accept their portion of the material … but if I move one away - the material (assigned to the creative UV) - moves with the blocks

 

Any thoughts? It really is driving me crazy. As I see the texture lined up across all the blocks the way I want - but it moves with whatever block I move.

 

… and that is the tip of the iceberg - Once I can figure out how to get the map to not move then I have to build the Kaleidocycle - which is extremely problematic. It makes the rubies cube like like a piece of cake. But once I get it done I will be delighted to share with the EIAS group.

 

Help!!!! Please … (hmeyers1@mac.com) 

[HMeyers]

Richard … 

 

Ahhhhhhh … stupid me … I just figured out why the texture was moving - ready for this, I was using an ubershape, a few squares - I didn’t actually build a model, I was just testing. So then i went into FZ and made some squares, stacked them exported as FACTs and then imported and put them into my test project. 

 

I deleted the old Uber squares and attached the new ones to the CreateUV - and bingo … it worked. The texture now moves with the pieces.

 

… Now I have to see if I can get this to work with a Kaleidocycle piece as I develop it. Any hints on how to make a Kaleidocyle animate correctly in EIAS would be greatly appreciated. What I did, to make the texture/material mapping easier is to have each face of the tetrahedron a separate piece (each 3D Tet is actually made up of 4 pieces), thinking that would be an easier way to map the 6 surfaces with a single texture (4 surfaces - 4 textures). Now I'm not so sure that will work since I wouldn't be able to attach the pieces I need to the CreateUV - if they are in other grouped Tet's. I hope this makes sense.

 

It might be easier to map to each individual piece … but currently that is not an easy task either. 

 

Of course the hardest part is to get the 3D "segments" to remain attached to each other and to rotate without losing the attachments in the correct space.

 

 

Thanks,

 

Hal