Can someone recommend a good Free utility for creating texture maps of 3d models? I currently use UV Mapper and when I use it with Poser it doesn't seem to create very good texture maps. Maybe I'm doing something wrong but the texture maps look sort of blurry in Poser 7. Also UV Mapper only seems to work with OBJ files. I would like to find a texture mapper which works with 3DS.

Many thanks for any recommendations.

Great tutorial here on how to use UVMapper and Roadkill together. I've done this tute...very easy to follow and gets really good results. There is a link to Roadkill (free) in the tute. Be careful to download the one the tutorial recommends.

Also, Wings3D does decent UV mapping as well. I believe Blender does too, but I can't vouch for that one ;o).

Wings will let you do uvs on a .3ds file. I'm not sure what you mean by the texture looks "blurry" in Poser 7. Did you make the template big enough (and therefore, the resulting texture)?

Just for clarification, what you create in UVMapper are the uvs. The texture map is what's created after you've painted something on the uv template :o).

Laurie

Quote - I currently use UV Mapper and when I use it with Poser it doesn't seem to create very good texture maps. Maybe I'm doing something wrong but the texture maps look sort of blurry in Poser 7. Also UV Mapper only seems to work with OBJ files. I would like to find a texture mapper which works with 3DS.

Show us an image of the blurry texture in your render and also a UV map layout for it.  UVs belong to OBJ models.  3DS is for old triangulated models with no texturing (decals are used instead).

I think uvmapper defaults to a 256 x 256 map. Thats too small for clear text in my opinion. Turning texture filtering OFF in the material room will help as will making it bigger. 

I realise you said "free" but really, if you want decent-looking textures with bump and displacement and everything, you won't go wrong with Stitch Witch by Kamilche. It's $50 at Daz but it sometimes goes on special.

Gary (and Laurie), is the entire texture blurry, or just certain areas?

  In Poser, a blurred area on the texture is often due to a sharply acutely angled poly, a needle-shaped "sliver", so to speak.  Often, this can be cured by spinning the edge(s) so as to re-organize the area into polygons which have gentler angles.  Selectively deleting an edge to combine two triangles into one quad will often help.

Another possibility is duplex geometry;  what appears to be a simple rectangle may actually be an N-gon because one of the vertices is doubled.  This can happen after doing bevel/inset operations.  Just select all vertices, note the vertex count, and then use the merge command.  Did the vertex count decrease?  If so, you just fixed some duplex points. 
Doubled points -and overlapping/doubled polys- can also cause "shadowed" areas.

Try  wings3d , it is very good tool  for uv mapping

Quote - Try  wings3d , it is very good tool  for uv mapping

How do you UV map with Wings? I currently use Wings3d for my models, however, I haven't figured out how to UV map with it. :(

Attached Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrV_YFnOGzU

Laurie

Yes, that is a great tutorial.

Quote - Here's an excellent tute....given to me by pauljs75 in the Wings 3D forum. This tute was invaluable to me for mapping in Wings :o). I'm glad I can pass it on.

Laurie

Good find!

I wrote a really bad UVMapping tut for Wings once...it's no longer in Tut's...
but Pauljs is the modeller I'd like to be...so go with that.

I found something called matmatic (I think) that was free...mebbe search for that.

That being said, many people use a program like Photoshop (definitely not free), but theGimp is..
Maybe even Project Dogwaffle...also free.

[Hi,
    I am trying to texture my models too and poser 7 & poser pro both render texture maps fuzzy, try reducing the gamma correction settings in the render dialogue box to around 1.50 from the default 2.20 this will help 

reduce your shading rate from 1 to say .2. that will sharpen the texture maps. you'll find the shading rate on your render options dialogue under advanced.

In my very humble opinion there are no good mapping tools on the market. The one that's bearable is called UVLayout and costs between 100 and 300 dollars. There's a free demo version which you should avoid at all costs (because it will ruin any other tools in existence for you).

Wings is the only mapping I ever understood.

And I've learned not to wait for the end of the project to do the mapping.  Mapping the model parts as you go along makes it much easier.

I've never tried mapping in Wings but since I use it for modelling, I'll give it a shot.  Thanks for the heads up. 

Quote - I've never tried mapping in Wings but since I use it for modelling, I'll give it a shot.  Thanks for the heads up. 

Check out that youtube link above SamT...you won't regret it. It makes everything make sense...lol.

Laurie

I've had pretty good luck with UVMapper Classic; I model in Lightwave, and as was suggested above, I break my models up, export a part and map it, then re-import it into Lightwave. When I;m done, I have several layers in my UV maps, but they are logical and relatively distortion-free, something I find much harder to do when the entire model is mapped at one time. Of course, this works much better for mechanical models than organics, since machines and non-organic objects can be more easily broken into components.