[Jakakadave]

OK I admit it, i'm a total noob and barely know which way around to hold the mouse when it comes to maxwell. That said, I've managed to put out some passable jewellery renders in the past, but for those i dont really have to get involved with much in the way of lighting, UVs or fancy materials.

Now, i've said to a friend that i'll render a mug which i've modelled in modo for her for a pitch she needs to give, she's given me the artwork, but I just cant understand how I position it on the model, it never seems to work.

Does this have soemthing to do with me needing to have the unwrapped uvs from modo, as i neither understand how to export the uvs from modo or how to import them into maxwell.

Can someone explain how this works please, i'm clearly stupid, but i'm also stumped and getting frustrated.

I've attached the files for you to have a look at...

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=47C03528

[itsallgoode9]

I'm not sure if you can in Modo (i'm not a modo user), but exporting as an .MXS keeps the scale of the models and UVs in tact. So if that's an option make sure you're doing that. If not an option, hopefully somebody else can help you out.

[Hervé]

for now try this one..

http://www.modonize.com/Scripts/132.aspx

[Jakakadave]

Well I think i worked out a workaround, in as much as i can just have a couple of extra meshes for the decals, but i still think i urgently need to get to understand about making materials properly and how to use UV maps - any tips on how to do that within maxwell studio?

[-Adrian]

Hi Jakakadave,

looking at the file, it seems you have mapped the whole mug with the same UV space. Basically, the UVs job is to describe where a pixel of 2D space should be located in 3D space.

The coordinates work like the graphs you know from simple school math, 0x/0y to 1x/1y. In your case, the mug has this coordinate space mapped onto it on many different places, so the reindeer label you want to use repeats itself all over the surface.



What you need to do is choose the region where you want the reindeer to be, select these polygons in Modo and scale them to fill as much UV space as possible without changing the aspect ratio - Modo might have done this automatically.

Invert the polygon selection, create UVs for the remaining polygons and scale them to a tiny bunch (they can overlap) that you place somewhere in the corner of UV Space.

The go to Texture > Export UVs to EPS to export the UV set. Open the EPS in e.g Photoshop and select an image size of 1:1 ration that suits you (roughly the size of the reindeer image without the white space around).

Make the reindeer image use all the space of the 'label' polygons. The UVs for the rest of the mug should have the image's white over them, somewhere in one of the corners.

Hope that was understandable.

[Jakakadave]

Wow Adrian, Awesome info, thank you so much for making such effort to answer my question. I will try and put this advice into practice.