AS I am slowly learning how to make new objects, I'm running into more than just technical problems. I can figure out the meshing ok, the UVmapping I can kinda manage, but the texture creating is becoming a problem. I could create new textures for other peoples recolorable items no problem. But somehow, now that I am trying to create textures for my own new objects, I suck!!!!!

I am making a perfume display stand. But....

1. Some of the perfume bottles, especially the round ones, have "shading" issues. Right in the front, where it is most visible, I get 50% of the object on the right side with light, and 50% of the object on the left side with heavy shadow? One object was so bad I ended up making it a "black and white" split design. Its in the pic below.

2. The entire object looks just plain wrong to me. I attached a photo..... Is it that there is too much color? Or too many shapes? Like the bottles should be the same shape? Is it that the display base texture is too busy?

3. All my "perfume bottle" shapes seem to have the mesh split in front. Like, when i try to put a label on one, I have to split it so It comes out looking right on the shape. Is this always true, is there someway to control it?


What hints and tips do you creators use to figure this stuff out? Is it all just pure talent and gut feeling? Some set of rules about what texture/color looks good on what mesh shape? Is there anything that can help me? I've spent a total of probably thirty hours overall on the perfume display. And I cant help but say, in all honesty, I think it came out terrible.

OK. Some observations I made were:

The top of the large "Oceans" bottle on the left perfume stand has a missing, unlinked or improperly formatted (or corrupt) texture image, which is why it has the large X on it.

Some of the items look like the largest texture image you have is too small... this gives the ones like the large bottles a pixelated look. The same image size on a little bottle would be fine, but on the larger ones gets stretched. This is always an issue between file size and desired detail.

The black and white one looks like the UV mapping is off, you can see where the two sides do not meet, and then the right side is the mirror image of the left. But that could be intentional.

The yellow small bottle needs smoothed, that should get rid of that shadow.

The purple/lavender bottle looks like the UV map is also in need of work, AI think that is what is causing the V-shaped tear on the upper half.

Some of the bottles show the seams too prominently... if these are seperate halves, then the seam needs to be unwelded and use something to smooth the seam so that the normals for each side of the seam are the same.

The blue bottle with the yellow top looks very nice.

You asked for some help... I am not being critical, just analytical. How you fix some of this stuff depends on what tools (meshing and UV mapping) you used.

<* Wes *>

Oh no, I have skin like an elephant, please don't worry about offending me.
It was stupid of me to have left out a few details. SOme of the original UVMap is still showing in my texture because I hadn't gotten to that part yet. It's all ok,...just not "colored in" yet. I was also messing around with the base, trying to see if a color change would help, thus the pink and purple displays.

1. The black and white....it is intentional, I was trying to cover up the weirdness of how it matched up and was shaded weird. Im not sure what I did, the mesh looks fine in the UVmap.....but then you put it on the object and yikes!! I tried making it yellow and one side was almost white, and the other was a dark poopy green. I was never able to get them to match, no matter how much I changed saturation, hue, tone, or dark/light.

2.AI? What is that, because that same tear in the purple has been bugging me.

3. It seems that the seams are causing me real trouble. What is unwelded? If you mean making the two pieces of texture exact so they line up...then I tried, and failed. Or is it something to do with the UVMap or mesh?


4. GAH! Wouldn't you know that blue bottle you like was something I threw together in two minutes! All the other ones I spent ages on! It kills me that it looks so good in the picture, because in the game it looks terrible. Everything else looks the same, but the bottle falls apart when seen really up close.

Thank you so much, I never turn away astute observations!

If the lighting seems really improbable, you may have incorrect normals in your mesh. What program are you using to make your meshes?

I'm using Milkshape. Errr, and what are normals? I know I've heard that term before....but no idea what it is.

I think normals means the surface of the mesh. AI could mean adobe illustrator. but i could be wrong, I am afterall still learning.

But from what i see, it looks like your original texture of bottles and the display platform are too small and it may have stretch when you map it onto your mesh becasue if you compare those with the flowers in flat colors (no textures) on the display platform they look fine.

heh, i don't do calculations but if you want to know more about surface normals, wikipedia and some 3D terminology here as well.

If you can imagine each poly/surface having an invisible pole sticking straight up from it so that it's at a 90 degree angle to that surface in all directions, that's sort of what a standard normal is. They're used by graphics software to figure out which way light shines and reflects off objects. Sometimes your normals can get out of whack (or sometimes people do it deliberately to produce particular effects) and make objects have improbable looking shadows or highlights etc. I'm no particular expert on how to manipulate them in milkshape, but you might like to check out these tools and see if they help?
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=139859

Good guess. But the mystery continues...

I am very sorry I did not see that, it is an editing mistake (typo), and instead of "AI" it was meant to say "I".

The dark on one side, and light on the other regardless of texture is typical of normals all pointing in one direction.

You need to search here and read the little bit that Dr. Pixel wrote about smoothing groups. Add those to your bottles where needed, and then use the Face/Smooth All menuitem.

As far as the seams go, if you are UV mapping right/left halves, then you need to make the place where the UV maps meet have two pairs of vertices up and down the seam. If you don't make that seam yourself, the exporter will, but it does not always pick the right normal to go with each half. Left as a single line of vertices, then each would need to have the UV from both the right and left halves at the same time, and the game file format cannot accept this.

There is a MilkShape plugin in the Body Meshing section by Demon432 called 'Align Normals' that will help make that seam smooth, or you can use the new Normal Data Merge plugin.

<* Wes *>