Fig. 21 Fig. 22 Fig. 23

In Fig. 22 I used the map you can see in Fig. 24. In case of imprecision in fitting the projection plane, you have this result. Using the right texture map (Fig. 20), you avoid this problem.



Fig. 24

Now we are ready to "convert" the texture map.

1. Select the tortoise-shell
2. Click on the projection icon in the multilister
3. RMC and choose Edit>Convert to File Texture
4. Check Anti-alias
5. Set X Resolution to 1000
6. Set Y Resolution to 1000
7. Click Convert Texture



Fig. 25

Depending on the complexity and on the resolution of the texture, the conversion will take from few minutes to half an hour or more. When the conversion is ready, Maya will put it in the sourceimages directory of your project (Tip � You can see the percentage of the conversion in the help line).

Using the Fcheck (Start>Programs>Maya>Fcheck) open the converted map and save it as tga file in the same directory.

Name it top_conversion.tga.

If everything went ok you should have a picture like this:



Fig. 26

Looking in the multilister you have probably noticed that Maya put a new surface shader called topProjection1 with this map (Fig. 26) and has assigned it to the model.

Go in the perspective view and take a render of the model. You can see that the new texture map fits all the model, but only the top part of the tortoise-shell is correctly textured (Fig. 27):



Fig. 27

It�s time to adjust the front part.

1. Go in the front view
2. Take a render of the model
3. Press Print Screen on your keyboard
4. Go to Photoshop
5. Ctrl+N
6. Ctrl+V to paste the screen shot
7. Cut the front view shot as you did before for the screen shot of the top view





Fig. 28 - Fig. 29 Note the difference between a Surface shader (not affected by light) and a Blinn shader (affected by light)

(Tip � I always create a Blinn shader in the multilister called test. I use it to better evaluete the texture map and expecially how light affects it; using a Surface shader, in fact, sometimes, expecially using plain colors, is not possible to understand how the geometry changes, so it�s impossible to draw a correct texture map � Fig. 29)

Using the image you just cut, draw the front texture map keeping in mind what follows:

Re/Draw only those parts that you best see in the view you are drawing (the front view in this case).

In this case you only need to draw the bottom part of the front view of the tortoise shell, since the top part is best seen in the top view (Fig. 30). We will redraw the other parts of the texture map later, when we consider the other views (back, side and bottom).



Fig. 30 This is the part of texture to redraw.

As I told you at the beginning, in this exercise you better draw simple texture maps to better understand how to "melt" the different "map-conversions". A front texture map like the one in Fig. 31 shold be good:



Fig. 31

As you can see, I used different colors (vioet for the lines, blue for top part) to better recognize them once the texture map is converted.

Now, using the same technique you used for the top texture map, project this map on the front part of the tortoise shell.

(Tip � Create another Surface Shader for this proiection; this way you can easily change the texture maps without moving or scaling the different projections. This is extremely important if you use realistic looking texturese, because you have to repeat these steps for the bump, ambient and specular maps).



Fig. 32