Well, here's some more progress on my train project. It really is amazing how hanging a few photo textures on an object really makes it feel much more real.

Now, I've figured out some of the UV Editor, obviously enough, I guess, but there are things I just can't wrap my brain around. When I tried to map to one of my door objects in the train, the mapper gave me a very discontinuous map; polygons that are connected on the model (like, say, the entire front of the model) are not connected in the UV map. The manual is a bit confusing to me, here, so I was wondering if there is a tutorial on using the UV mapping tools available anywhere.... Anyone know of one?

Thanks!
Dex

I don't know of any tutorials off hand, and I'd need abit more info on what it's doing, like a screenshot of the UV mapper in order to get a better idea of what's going on. The UV Mapper takes some getting used to, and there are some issues I have with it that I wish they'd fix, like being able to put more than one polymesh on a single map without having to do a boolean union or exporting as an obj and re-importing, but it is rather powerful, and a lot easier to use than the uv mapper I used to use....

It gets better with each post! For object like this I've had the best luck using the box mode in the UV mapper. Some of it is based upon how you've created your mesh a well. Triangulation creates really wierd maps some times. On a copy of your model, select some of the areas and use the Untriangulate tool in the vertex modeler to create a grid instead. This doesn't always work well if you've got a lot of vertices on one side an not the other though. Afterwords, going back into the UV mapper will show a better mapping result. If you want to recreate some of the elements making a manual grid, TOXE's description of creating a running shoe in one of 3dXtract's past publications is very good. (this could be a good, fast option if you're getting the hang of the vertex modeler now!) Mark

One big trouble I've had with Carrara's UV mapper is that it insists on connecting across the "seam" on a cylinder map (stretching a row of polys across to the other side). I've done the laborious chore of detaching, but lately I've just applied the basic mapping in Steve Cox's UVmapper then gone back to Carrara to tweak on the vertice level. I also tend to finish the map in UVmapper because the interface is more comfortable -- esp in the last touch-up stages, nudging or tweaking the size with UVmapper's hotkeys is much better than the "tool out of control" effect of Carrara's scale tool. Incidentally.... anyone got any ideas how to map a cone? Obviously, the most authalic map would be a circle with a gore cut out. But I can't figure out how to do this with the tools I have, in any way other than dragging all the verts by hand. I do have something helpful I've discovered, however; if you UVmap then add cuts via adding internal points, or tesselating, or turning on Subdivision Surfaces, the new polys are interpolated into the existing map. I've been able to map a couple of things by doing them at the low-poly stage, then adding detail. One caveat; for some bizarre reason if you "convert deformed object to mesh" then Carrara trashes the UVmap. If you EXPORT the subdivision surface, you get back the new mesh -- still properly mapped.

Thanks for the tips, folks. Yeah, I'm starting to realize that UV Mapping is an art unto itself! I'm getting there. Last night I managed to get the doors and front of the train mapped and textured. (Of course, that's on my computer at home, and I'm at work now, so look for another progress post later....) Mark, I wound up using the box mapping for the most part, but on the doors, used planar mapping. For some reason, when I opened one of the front doors in the UV editor, some polygons that were in the middle of the front side, were actually from the back side, and vice versa. So, if I put the outside texture on the "front" part of the map, then an inside texture on the "back," it wound up putting part of the back on the front, and part of the front on the back. The texture error occurred along an edge between two vertices that I did not create. It's curious, but I was able to get the doors textured with the planar map. Anyway, this is a very fun project that I'm learning a lot from. Nomuse -- Regarding the cone, I'd break it apart in a box mapping mode -- it makes sense to me visually. Tough to match up the seams, yes, but it'd be possible. Let us know how your attempts progress!