[macitect]

macitect, it works correctly, I checked and double checked

Not adjust to object, but rightclick the projector>Normalize. This will make the UVs 1m in size.

Alternatively, try unchecking RS in the material, close the texture picker, open it again and check RS. This does the same thing as Normalize only 'behind the scenes', when you apply such a material to an object(s), it will create a cubic 1m projector for those objects.

OK, understood. I didn't even know about the normalize option before. Thanks.

So then that just leaves me with another quick question (because I use SketchUp and hate doing all the material projections there-in). Is there a way, once the projector has been normalized, to set the origin point of the texture on the object?

OK now my head is swimming a little - if I have RealScale on a material shouldn't the scaling of the object projector read 1,1,1 after I've normalized and not before? (Sorry if I seem a little slow on the uptake - I think SU is just so different from other 3D apps that I haven't got my head around all the UV issues yet.)

[Mihai]

Is there a way, once the projector has been normalized, to set the origin point of the texture on the object?

You can still move it like any other projector, just make sure you are in UV selection mode and you have the projector selected in the UV list.

OK now my head is swimming a little - if I have RealScale on a material shouldn't the scaling of the object projector read 1,1,1 after I've normalized and not before?

No, because:

The scale you see in the UV params are relative to the object they are attached to, not world units.

[macitect]

No, because:

The scale you see in the UV params are relative to the object they are attached to, not world units.

Thanks for your patience and explanation. Sorry to have made you repeat yourself.

Cheers!

[Mihai]

Just have to add that Real Scale is not some magical thing that always makes your texture apply perfectly to an object, it's useful mostly for floors where the edges of the tiles will be hidden, and you want to reuse a material for a different sized floors.

But for almost all other uses, it's probably faster to use normal projectors so you don't get any tiles cut off if your object is 1.25m for example. Worse if your object is scaled non proportionally, some sides may not be cut off while others yes.

[superbad]

That's because the UVs in 1.5 were not working correctly.

Er, OK. Anyway, I just tried the right click> Normalize trick and that does work. But here's my problem:

I had grown accustomed to the "incorrect" behavior that had been in Maxwell Studio since RC5. (I don't have any other real rendering software, so I apparently never knew it was wrong- it worked great for me.) I render furniture, which is made of little parts of wood joined together. Nothing says fake in a render like having the woodgrain jump seamlessly across part boundaries, or having the same bit of distinctive grain visible on a bunch of different parts.

In all versions <1.6, I would fix this by grabbing 1/3 of the parts and setting the scale to 0.9, and grabbing another 1/3 and setting their scale to 1.1. This also mixes up the grain size a bit and really looks pretty good. And it's fast- I can do it in seconds.

With this new 1.6 behavior, all the scale values are different per body, so I can't easily do this anymore. The only other solution I can think of is to make 3 different versions of all my materials and vary the tiling in each one, but then I have three times the amount of material upkeep to do. What would you suggest?

[Mihai]

I see, so you have 3 different objects in this example? You could select all of them at once, all their UVs will appear in Object params, select all of them hit Normalize. Basically you are now back at 1.5 behavior, your texture has the same size on all the parts. Now you can simply vary the scale of each of the projectors like you did previously. So you don't need to make three materials.

But apart from this, without proper UVs (I mean using an application which allows you to map each face exactly like you want on the texture), with just cubic UVs you still have to do more work, perhaps moving each of the projectors a bit so another part of you texture shows up, if you really want realism and use the most of your texture space.

[superbad]

I see, so you have 3 different objects in this example? You could select all of them at once, all their UVs will appear in Object params, select all of them hit Normalize. Basically you are now back at 1.5 behavior, your texture has the same size on all the parts. Now you can simply vary the scale of each of the projectors like you did previously. So you don't need to make three materials.

It's more like a couple hundred+ pieces in a typical scene. Yeah, I see that I can normalize multiple objects all at once, and I've done that. Now I have a bunch of projectors with UV scales like:

66.667 0.893 2.778
1.227 0.955 200.000
1.015 40.000 1.961
etc.

Now you can simply vary the scale of each of the projectors like you did previously.

No, I can't do it like I did previously. Because all those scale values are different now, I can't select say 30 projectors and change their scale by 10%. I would have to do it individually per object, which is an enormous hassle. And even if I chose to go through that enormous hassle, I would have to get out the calculator for almost every value, because I can't figure 90% of 1.961 in my head. So on a typical scene, what was a 15 second operation (select a bunch of projectors, change scale from 1.0 to 0.9) would now take a couple hours. See my problem? I'm not seeing any elegant solution.

IMO, this is the kind of change that you really shouldn't make to a UI, even if the behavior you're changing is considered "non-standard." At this point the software has been in release for what, a couple years, and users have adjusted to its way of doing things. At the very least you've got to provide a way to duplicate previous functionality that you're taking away.

[w i l l]

Or just provide functionality.

[S4BB]

If the new method is correct, then I have a real problem. I model handheld electronics, which are typically made up of multiple surface (of all different proportions) that need to have a uniform texture over the entire surface. With the way the projector is now working, I cannot get anything close to uniform size of the Textured Decal over the entire surface. In 1.5 this worked very easily, just typed in the same scale factor for X,Y and Z, and it worked perfectly. This is a major impact to my work.

Mihai, I tried what you suggested and cannot get it to work. To test I used a Primitive Cube from the library, and then randomly scaled the proportion of the cube into a rectangle. Then switching to the Textured Decal view, I cannot get the scale of the texture uniform on all three sides without a lot of work. If you were to now radius all edges, getting the scale uniform on all surfaces becomes even harder. This was so simple in 1.5, better then any previous software I had used before, that is very difficult to see it no longer working so simply.

[Mihai]

S4BB, rightclick the projector>Normalize, this will make all the sides have equal length (a length of 1m). The scaling shown is relative to the object it's attached to, as is the position and rotation.

[S4BB]

Just installed the patch and it's working now! Thanks, this will speed up the process again.

[Metabolik]

@ superbad : I have the same problem... but i have a little solution.

1 Normalize all your projectors.
2 Use "tile x", "tile y" of your maps to set up the size of it.

After all your pieces will have the same mapping and you don't have to calculate all scale value on all projectors.

I hope it will help you...

(sorry for my bad english)

[S4BB]

Mihai

Looking at it now, I have another question. When I normalize the projector, it looks as you stated, that it is set to egual lengths. But I do not see what I believe you saying, that the scale of the of the projector is realative to the object it is attached to. I created 2 objects, one 50% scale of the other and when I Normalize the projector, the mapping appears to be the same scale, realative to a global setting not the the object. This is an issue, in the sense that I believe I would now have to create unique materials based on scale.

Same scenario, I have two objects that are the same size and I want the scale of the material to be 50% on one of the objects. So to get the scale of the material to half the size, I would clone the material and adjust the X and Y tileing to .5 and would get the result. So each time I want the material at a different scale I would have to create a unique material, this would get very confusing. In the prior version of the software, I could adjust the Scale UV Parameters independantly for each object to get the scale of the material correct, and use only one material.

I can see how to now get uniform scaling (Normalize) but I cannot figure out how to scale the uniform scaling. Sorry if this is confusing, but it worked perfectly in the prior version, and was incredibly simple to adjust.

Thanks

[Mihai]

Looking at it now, I have another question. When I normalize the projector, it looks as you stated, that it is set to egual lengths. But I do not see what I believe you saying, that the scale of the of the projector is realative to the object it is attached to.

If you click Normalize, the projector becomes 1m in size, no matter the size of the object. The scale you see shown in the UV parameters are always shown relative to the object size. So, in the viewport you will see that each of the projector is the same size (1m), but the scaling shown in the UV parameters will be different, because it's scale/rotation/translation is shown relative to the object it's attached to.

Same scenario, I have two objects that are the same size and I want the scale of the material to be 50% on one of the objects.

Yes, and there are other situations were I might like to have a projector 200% size of the object it's attached to, this seems to me a more usual situation than having absolute units. If you're always working in absolute units and inputting .5 in the UV parameters ment you turn all the UVs to 0.5 meters, this could mean they are too big or too small for some of your objects. So you would still have work to do, adjusting each UV for a particular object.

So in your case, with these two equally sized objects, you apply 1 material and you would like that particular material to be half the size on one of the objects, set it's scaling to 0.5.

In the prior version of the software, I could adjust the Scale UV Parameters independantly for each object to get the scale of the material correct, and use only one material.

Speaking practically, what would in this case mean correct scale? No matter if the UV params are displayed as relative to object, or absolute units, you would still have to scale them and watch the viewport until that particular texture looks ok for that particular object. Just note that what you are scaling is now shown relative to the object it's attached to, which is really much more useful.

Say you have a cube that's 1.47x1.56x2.34m and it's UVs are the exact size of the cube. You apply the material to it and you think, I'd like this texture to be 1.5 times as big on one side, half as big on the other side.

If the scale in the UV params showed you 1.47x1.56x2.34 (since they would show absolute units) you would have to calculate yourself how much 1.47x1.5, 2.34x0.5 is and enter that. In 1.6 since the scale of the projector is shown relative to the object it's attached to, you can simply enter 1.5, 1, 0.5 for scale. Is this a better or worse way? This is how it works btw in other 3D applications, if you're using Cinema as well, check how the adjustments for UVs work.

[superbad]

1 Normalize all your projectors.
2 Use "tile x", "tile y" of your maps to set up the size of it.

After all your pieces will have the same mapping and you don't have to calculate all scale value on all projectors.

That only works if you want all the parts using a particular material to have the same scale. I don't, because all the textures will line up. Studio also crashes every single time I edit a tile value, a serious bug that persists in 1.6.1.

In 1.6 since the scale of the projector is shown relative to the object it's attached to, you can simply enter 1.5, 1, 0.5 for scale.

Huh? That doesn't make any sense at all. Here is a scenario. You tell me how to do it.

Step 1. This is a cubic projector with 1,1,1 scale. It's distorted and strange, no good.



Step 2. Here is the same projector after using Normalize. It's not distorted anymore, but now the scale value is 66.667, 0.893, 2.778.



Step3. I want the texture 50% bigger on all sides. In 1.5 I would have set the scale to 1.5, 1.5, 1.5. What do I do in 1.6?