XSI Rendermap - Appropriate Usage?

Hello all,

I'm hoping someone who uses XSI (or any 3d editing package which allows you to bake textures into an object) to give me some helpful advice.

I've been playing around with making interior scenes, rooms, corridors and the like. Thinking that it would be really easy way to texture them I texture my object using lots of procedural maps to get the look I want when it is rendered with appropriate light sources before proceeding to rendermap (bake) the textures into the object.

The problem I am having is that on geometry such as a corner section of a corridor the rendermapped texture is often wrong - it may be skewed out of position, appear all black in parts or have other awful flaws. I've tried various settings and they do not help so far.

Am I going about this the wrong way? If so - what is the appropriate way for texturing such geometry for real time usage. Rendermap seems to work on objects which are less convoluted it doesn't seem to like curve tubular shapes.

Side Issue: I'm yet to find any books in bookshops in Australia directly related to XSI:Softimage they're all Maya, Lightwave and 3dsMAX.

Thanks,
Matty

You might be better looking at some of the DVD training for something like XSI... I think they cover a lot more than most books. But, Collin's have a few books...

www.collinsbooks.com.au

Can I see a few images of your object? Also, what kind of UVs are on it? I use 4.2, so... things may be different for you if you're using version 5 or 6 (and ultimapper)

Hi Reactor -

here is the view from within XSI (prior to rendermapping the object)



The floor grid is simply a procedural grid applied using an XZ planar mapping, as well as the black grill things on either side of the floor, the strips are simply another procedural grid applied using a YZ mapping to the walls (it could just as easily be XY though - it would give the same effect here) and the basic corridor wall is a cloud texture applied with no specific UV Mapping set.

I'll have a look at that link - most of the collins bookstores near me seem to only have 'Windows 98 for Dummies' or similar books on the shelves these days...

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/102-9433598-4081752?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=XSI%3ASoftimage&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Go

Thanks Mustang - there's quite a few there...

I just tried adjusting the UV of the red stripes so that the texture support more closely followed the wall (turn 45 degrees) and it seems to have helped somewhat.

Hmm okay... well, the black areas could be caused by the UVs being outside of the UV area. Make sure they're all inside, and you shouldn't end up with any areas not mapped to the texture.

Unless I'm misunderstanding how you have things working... the skewing sounds like a UVing issue (as you seem to have found) because a planar mapping won't map correctly to a curved surface. You'll have to experiment with a few other methods of mapping to work out how best to fix the distortion... (contour stretch?) but once that's done, it should look pretty good.

It's coming along nicely though, I have to say :)

For some good tutorials-
www.3dtutorial.com (some cover rendermapping)