TIPS ON TEXTURING IN LITHIUM UNWRAPPER...

I'll explain here shortly the best way to make textures/texture in Lithium...

First - the ship you're texturing - is it symetrical? If it is, and you don't intend to put much writings on it, than you can have a bit more detailed texture...

STEP 1:
Slap on some very basic textures on your model (these are just the main coloring/panel textures of some sort). If you want, you can even do a bit more detailed texturing before step 2, it's even better that way.

STEP 2:
Make a render of your model(high-res...1024x768 is my personal choice):
- If it's symetrical then the render(picture..be sure it's tga..uncompressed and 32bit) will have to contain top view, bottom view, ONE side view, front view and rear view. (Note that since the ship is symetrical, the top, bottom, front and rear view don't have to be complete - only a bit more than a half can be visible and it will still work)
- if the model is not symetrical,. then you will need all the views and complete ones (including the left & rgiht side views)
EXAMPLE:


NOTE: If you have wings, panels or some other parts of you ship that overlap other part when looking at the ship from a specific side, Lithium can slap the same texture over both parts. I'll show you what I mean with another example:

See how the part of the phoenix insignia from the side wings can be seen on some other parts?

This can be avoided in 3 ways:
1. Moving the parts on the model itself before the rendering, (just for the rendering purposes, not for keeps), so that you can later move the same face in Lithium to their new positions.

This FS2 version of the Armageddon bomber I made had the issue that (when looked from above) the big canon covered half of the blu panels at the end. Thus, when I textured it, half of the panel was textured wit the cannon texture...Now as you can see, by moving the cannon faces to the side, and by doing the same on the render, that problem was easily fixed.


2. Smart texturing. If you texture the overlapping panel and the one beneath in the same basic way (no insigina, writings, anything too distincitve on that part) the overlapping won't be noticed at all...


STEP 3:
Resize the picture to 512x512(you can allso use 1024x1024, but that's only if you made a very high-res render).

STEP 4:
Convert your model(completely untextured) to Milkshape format. Open it to make sure everything is o.k. (Don't add hardpoints yet)

STEP 5:
Start Lithium Unwrapper...
Go to File->Model->Open and open your model.
Select->All
Tools->UV Mapping->Box (just klick o.k. now)

Lithium will now analyze the model and devide it into parts..like this:

Notice the marked areas.

The arrow icon is used to select faces, drag boxes and move selected items (and you can scale only when arroww is selected)
the cross arrow icon is for moving the view around
the magnyfing glass icon if for zooming, unzooming

Now, to begin:
Click on the materials(the one on the right side of the screen)->Add. Then click on the new untilted. go to properties. Now go to Maps. Now select bitmap in the upper box. Click properties, change and select your Texture.
(For the texture to appear click on materials then n untilted again)

Drag a box around just ONE of the model views and drag it in the blue are outside the texture(you might want to unzoom for that). Do that with all, but make sure they are spaced apart so you can easiyl select just one of them later.

For this tutorial I wll assume your model is symetrical and thus will explain how make the best of it... If ti is unsymetrical, then wielding is not neded.

Drag a box around one of the side views...Then use edit->flip->horizontal.

Now both views look the same..move one over another as precise as you can.
Now, drag a box around both of them and use Edit->Weld (Tolerance 0.001)..and..presto..you now have just one side view that will apply for both sides..

Now for the top view...
Select just the simetrycal part of the top view and use Edit->Flip->Vertical and allign it to the other part. Weld again.


Now do the same for the bottom, front and rear views...

All that's left is the simple matter of using Rotate and Sacle->free to put each part where it belongs on the texture...

Now just go to model->save and you're done!!!

EDIT: Allmost forgot.
You can use Lithium to texture normally, with tons of smaller textures.
Just drag all ship views(faces) outside the texture area (to the blue area), then add the textures you wish tu use under materials. Now just select a texture (et's say engine) and drag the engine part of the model meash inside the texture area to where you want it to be.
The texture will be applied to ONLY the faces that are inside the box. Allso, when you ****ch materials, all faces that belong to another material wll become invisible(untill you select that material again) to make it easyer for you....


Edited by - Chips on 10/31/2004 7:28:20 AM