heyas; this is just a strange musing theory; it has nothing to do with reality. so don't read too much into it. suppose i said i was gonna go and remap all the major animals around. cat, dog, horse, charger, lion, wolf, camel, bear, rhino, neo, geo, wee beasties, hatchies and hydras the whole lot. and suppose i said i was going to map them all to use the same uvs. well, except some obvious incompatibilities like the head and hooves and stuff. but the main body, all use the same maps. would you say: a: 'oh what a wonderful idea; it would make my life so much easier to be able to paint one map and have it work with any animal.' or b: 'are you NUTS!!??! do you have any idea how much stretching and distorting that would cause? it'd be a big pain in the *(@&%!!' um, or... c: 'are you NUTS!!??! i paint one texture, and somebody buys it and they can use it on ALL their animals? they don't have to buy my dog texture for the dog and the horse texture for the horse? you trying to run me outta business??' candid replies appreciated, thanks :)

I would first ask how bad the stretching's going to be, if it was going to be bad then I would say: "b: 'are you NUTS!!??! do you have any idea how much stretching and distorting that would cause? it'd be a big pain in the *(@&%!!'" If it was minimal (I mean really minimal), then I would say: "a: 'oh what a wonderful idea; it would make my life so much easier to be able to paint one map and have it work with any animal.'" Stretching (to me) is the key issue.

d: 'can I have some of what you've been snorting ;)' e: 'where's the fun in having just 1 texture for everything? just think of all the unused harddrive space we have to fill with textures ;)

You would have to have the patience of an angel to do that, that would be a very big job. Just making one good stretch free uv map is time consuming not to mention mind numbing. Also having the same texture for several animals would IMHO might take away from the uniqueness of each breed.

Hm I would ask something different: How can it be done? Thomas

Just a wild (and I really do mean wild) guess here, but I wouldn't mind betting the majority of quadrupeds would be able to use as near as dammit the same UV map. I mean, the basic pattern of a horse dog, cow, cat etc is a body, a leg at each corner, head at one end, tail at t'other. :)

That's true. But it would mean massaging all the vertices to line up in the same shape without too much stretching, not to mention that the nose of a dog and the nose of a horse for example would not necessarily fall on the same vertices on both models how would you compensate for that without causing stretching on one of them?

I would propose a separate map for the body and the heads, as in the millenium figures from DAZ3D. That way the fundamental construction of quadruped vertebrates could be covered with one body map, as the more or less different heads (speaking in mesh terms) can use specialised maps. My $0.02 Willy

And to continue DominiqueB's argument, how would the same texture look on an elephant and a giraffe? An elephant has a rotund body with large features and pillars for legs. A giraffe has a very tall, slender body with an extremely elongated neck with twigs for legs. I don't think that they would accept a "universal quadriped" texture very well. From my experience, unique models should have unique texture maps.

The bridge needs to be unique and long enough to catch your attention. Yet still fit in with the theme of the melody. Oops.... I thought you said music theory. ;-)

Until I took up guitar, I always thought that the "circle of fifths" was a bar drinking game - ba da bum!

a: 'oh what a wonderful idea; it would make my life so much easier to be able to paint one map and have it work with any animal.' If I could do animal textures that is :)

uuuhhh - not sure it'll work so good. I really don't see that the benefits would match the amount of work needed. A similar project (that I started) would be to take the p4kids and remap them for posettes textures. And also map the milboy for Mike's.

Sounds great! I've always wanted a dalmation horse! LOL

interesting musings Bloodsong. Um...Whens the last time you had a CAT scan? hehe. WOW, I hope you don't have any plans for about the next 8 months :) ~EA

er... b! except you DO have an idea how much distortion that would cause. lol

hmm... interesting responses, thanks :) wombat: read the part in the first post again where it says this purely hypothetical question has nothing to do with reality. ;)

Bloodsong, I realize you said this was theoretical - but do you have a purpose in mind? Looking at a few of the existing animal textures, I don't see enough commonality between the different animal texturing. What is in common, is probably the easiest part... No, I'm thinking about this all wrong. Me bad. The benefit would be in putting some new exotic textures on to animals - lots of realistic textures already exist. Now I like the idea. The stretching might not matter so much for that. Could make anthropomorphic textures with body paint and tattoos. A herd of diverse sentient animals that belong to a given cyber-tribe, using a shared texture. NOTE: I'm not a texturer - I'm just interested in characters that blur the human/animal boundary. Why did you dismiss wombat's querying how such a task might be done? I am curious as to your thoughts about how to accomplish this. -- ToolmakerSteve

heyas; because i have absolutely no plans nor inclinations to actually take any existing animals and make them share the same map. the only way it could be done is by some obsessive-compulsive nut going over the things in UVMapper Pro, and moving the little vertices all around by hand. or, i suppose, somebody with a really hugely powerful remapping thing that will do it for you. or, in short, i don't think it CAN be done. not by any sane person. i'm actually asking a misleading question to answer a question that has nothing to do with the question in question. there, i'm sure that cleared everything right up :)

pop Coming out of nose hurts like hell Thanks to Spit and Jaqui.. NOT FUNNY!!! LMAO growling at Jaqui for his, Siamese Jackass commment.