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Repeating Texture From UV Map In Maya

Discussion in 'Formats & External Tools' started by platonia96, Feb 9, 2012.

  1. platonia96

    platonia96

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    I have a texture on my UV map that I wish to repeat across a surface in maya. (Bear with me, this is my first attempt at hand painting, no comments please)



    Any ideas? I thought I heard that there was a technique in which you could 'fold' (if this is the right word) the UV's in order to repeat a texture.

    -myjean17
     
  2. Jessy

    Jessy

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    You can't do this without editing the UV map. Maybe you're confusing "texture map" and "UV map"?

    Tiling is easier and more performant when you can use an entire tiling texture, because you can use a single polygon and just scale it up. However, if your mesh is subdivided, you've got other options. Use one quad on your mesh for the texture's tile. Then, the best thing you can do for performance is to do what you said; "fold" the UVs – it works just like folding a piece of paper over and over again. The downside of this approach is that the tiling will necessitate mirroring.

    Alternatively, you can create UV seams at every quad. This will increase the vertex count, but it will allow you to choose to use the texture in any orientation, anywhere on the mesh. You could even move every tile into a different place in the UV map, because any square outside 0-1 is the same thing as the 0-1 square (only with less precision if you go overboard, way outside 0-1). However, that approach will lead to floating point error popping up, too, so if you can live with the annoyance of having all the quads on top of each other in the UV map, you should.

    You should not use black for the background.
     
    Last edited: Feb 10, 2012
  3. platonia96

    platonia96

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    Yes- my bad. I meant that I did not want to have to edit the texture.
    Thanks for the information. I'll check this out tomorrow.
     
  4. platonia96

    platonia96

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    So how would I go about 'folding' the UV's?
     
  5. Jessy

    Jessy

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    Do you know how to edit UVs? You just need to know how to select, drag, and snap (scaling by -1 will make the process faster so you can flip a bucnh of the UVs at once.) I don't know of a better way to describe it than folding paper. Go draw a grid on a piece of paper. Fold along the gridlines, however you want. Do the same thing in the UV Editor, unless your UV editing tools provide a better option for this.
     
  6. macdude2

    macdude2

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    Sorry to revive an old thread, but I am having trouble figuring out how I would fold a UV map with only 4 verts. When I try and move the verts, it simply compresses the map into a single line. Is there anyway to add more verts to the UV map without adding the same number of verts the geometry of the actual object?
     
  7. Jessy

    Jessy

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    No. Are you really that concerned about two verts?? :-0
     
  8. macdude2

    macdude2

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    Well, if I wanted to tile it twice in both directions, it would mean going from 2 polys and 4 verts to 8 polys and 9 verts, which is over twice the number verts and 4 times the numbers of polys just to make 4 tiles.
     
  9. jengy

    jengy

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    Use the Repeat UV feature within the material. There are two ways that I know of to access this in Maya.

    Hypershade
    1) Go to the Hypershade
    material your texture is connected to
    2) Right click and choose Graph network
    3) Select the placed2dtexture node connected to your material.

    Via the Mesh
    1) Select the mesh/faces you have the material applied to.
    2) Open the Attribute Editor (typically Ctrl+A)
    3) Choose the tab that has the name of your material (lambert, blinn, or a custom name)
    4) Click the symbol next to the material name (under the material tab) that looks like a square with a triangle going into it from the left. 5) Press this button twice and you should arrive at the place2dtexture node for this material.

    What to Do Once You Get to the "place2dtexture" Node
    1) Set the RepeatUV values to something other than 1. If you're trying to tile something 64 times on the U and V, set the two boxes to 64.

    Hope that helps.
     
  10. jengy

    jengy

    Joined:
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    Use the Repeat UV feature within the material. There are two ways that I know of to access this in Maya.

    Hypershade
    1) Go to the Hypershade
    2) Right click the material you want to tile and choose Graph network
    3) Select the placed2dtexture node connected to your material.

    Via the Mesh
    1) Select the mesh you have the material applied to.
    2) Open the Attribute Editor (typically Ctrl+A)
    3) Choose the tab that has the name of your material (always set a custom name for materials--it makes this easier)
    4) Click the symbol next to the material name (under the material tab in the Attribute Editor) that looks kinda like this >] (square with triangle coming in from the left)
    5) Press this button twice and you should arrive at the place2dtexture node for this material.

    What to Do Once You Get to the "place2dtexture" Node
    1) Set the RepeatUV values to something other than 1. If you're trying to tile something 64 times on the U and V, set the two boxes to 64.

    Hope that helps.
     
  11. Dan_Tsukasa

    Dan_Tsukasa

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    It seems no one has suggested the method games often use, but its not always the best way and can cause some headaches if you do it haphazzardly.

    NOTE: This will only work if your mesh is a grid for example.

    Simply UV a bunch of areas and have them overlapping in the UV map, then just place them all on the same area of the Texture Sheet.

    This can be a pain in the ass at times especially if its badly planned and further down the line you suddely decide you'd rather not have it so obviously repeating.

    The suggestion of moving folding UV's seems odd, but its possible I'm missunderstanding it.
    If you have 4 verts making a square, if you take the 2 from the left and place them ontop of the 2 from te right You'd like get a simple |, which would make your texture squished as all hell.
     
  12. Jessy

    Jessy

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    Exactly. I realize that diagrams would have been helpful, but I wasn't just stringing random words together. I don't think you actually read the thread:

     
  13. Dan_Tsukasa

    Dan_Tsukasa

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    I still think it would be a bad move if for example his floor was 1 giant plane lets say, and he wanted this across it, It'd be easier memory wise to simply use say 2 texture sheets than have to subdivide his flooring greatly in order to achieve the same result.

    I didn't 'not read' I simply missunderstood as I said, I thought it seemed incredibly odd advice, but since its the same thing I suggested it now makes much more sense, I just wouldn't have worded it as folding, as I count each set of UVs as seperate, so I think of it more as overlapping or layering, stacking is the technical term I believe, the term folding is what completely threw me off. my appolgies.

    I think an aproach like this is best considered when first starting modelling an object, it saves a bit of a headache later.
     
  14. Jessy

    Jessy

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    It'd be easier on all accounts. Definitely do it that way.
     
  15. Dan_Tsukasa

    Dan_Tsukasa

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    I wonder if the community would benefit from a 'best rpactices' sort of thing when it comes to texturing and repeating UVS, seems a lot of people struggle with it.

    Probably not the best place to ask, but would anyone eb interested in this?