How do you keep a tiled textures from distorting on an object? Right now I'm trying to just put a 1x1 tile on a 10x5x5 cube and the texture gets stretched or squeezed depending on the side it's on.

Use parametric mapping to put the texture map on the right sides (See the drop down menu of shader types at the top of the shader window). You'll need to create a new shader for the side that is not square that is also not square in the same proportions. e.g. One set of sides on your cube is 5x10, you'll have to create a texture that is twice as wide as it is tall.

Also, if you're tiling the texture, use parametric mapping and set the tiling for the "long" side to be twice as many tiles in one dimension as the other.

Essentially, you need to tell Carrara to put a different shader on the square sides as on the non-square sides.

Does that point you in the right direction?

• Jasen.

Message edited on: 10/06/2004 13:09

yeah, thanks. Seems like a lot of work to just have an undistorted tiled texture. lol. Still new to this, I usually do this sort of thing in Vue.

Now that I reread my response, I see it may be a bit confusing. The paragraph starting with "Also" is a different way to do things. You can either create a new texture map at the right dimensions and tile it the same as the other, OR tile your existing texture twice as many in one dimension vs the other. Both techniques use parametric mapping to put the different shaders on the correct sides. - Jasen.

Message edited on: 10/06/2004 14:04

First step to good textures....good mapping.

You could also choose "flat mapping" in the texture room and choose "whole object" . This does a good job but you may run into a size problem on your odd length side. In C3 it is an issue , in c4 they have a scale transform that gives you the ability to easily have different scales on different sides. See image. This is a quick shader using flat mapping and transform in C4 .

Cool. I'm doing models for Poser most of the time so I tend to map out everything parametric anyhow.

great, was hoping that they would have a fix for that in the new version :)

BTW, does Carrara respect UV space or does it crop? Reason I'm asking, is I applied a proceedural to "whole object" using parametric setting. The object was carefully mapped so the smaller faces took up proportionally smaller parts of the total UV space. But as I look at the test renders, the proceedural seems to be scaled down to fit on a face-by-face basis anyhow.

the proceedural seems to be scaled down to fit on a face-by-face basis anyhow.

I'm going through the same thing with the "brick" operator. I have a number of walls of different sizes. The bricks scale to fit the object rather than being in some global size space. I've partially solved this by using a reference shader for the color channel and individual brick shaders for the objects. But it is a pain and there are other problems with this solution (the bump channel to be specific). I may have to hunt down a texture map to solve the problem or find a plug-in.

• Jasen.

Have you looked at what happens with a layers list, parametrically mapping seperate shader domains for each face?

Have you looked at what happens with a layers list, parametrically mapping seperate shader domains for each face?

Yes, they scale to fit the faces. So if for example you have a shader that repeats 20 times, the shader in the domains will repeat 20 times and look good on a long flat face, but squish up and repeat 20 times on a thin face. - Jasen.

Great. So it's a total waste to make a proportional parametric map if you're going to use proceedurals. Have to use picture textures instead. I'll have to check this myself, but it makes sorta intuitive sense...

Yeah. It'd be nice if there was some sort of "global space" for some of the tiling textures. - Jasen.