Materials to faces and UV mapping?

[digitaldavinci]

I am in need of a simple answer here.
I have a complete object.
I was assuming I could select faces, apply a material, uvMap and create text, then hide those faces and move on to another set of faces to do the same thing constantly moving around the object assigning faces this way till the whole model is matted and uv mapped.
I rename the created textures to something relevant.
I have seen Wings 3d drop the multi face materials next time I enter wings.
Face selections also change.

My question is 'Can I work with a subset of faces of an object in this way that are not whole objects?'
Or do I need to make those facial subsets separate objects to keep the work in the outliner stable?

I found this problem as I was working the wings interface and started noticing work was disappearing. Either I found an operational back door that isnt valid or wings has problems or my workflow concept is incorrect.
I am working the current Mlab version to use the boolean functions.
I also would like to know if it is safe to switch between the current wings and mlab version on the same project file?

I hope I was clear in my explanations.

[micheus]

Hi digitaldavinci. I hope I can help you with this.
It's something hard to explain writing and there are some small variations we can have in the process depending on what exactly we intend to do.

I recommend you to watch these very instructive tutorials. The guy will talk about another situation which is when we have separated objects, uvmap them and then combine them:
UVMapping in Wings3D - part 1
UVMapping in Wings3D - part 2

Well, lets go...

I was assuming I could select faces, apply a material, uvMap and create text (...)

I found this problem as I was working the wings interface and started noticing work was disappearing. (...)

You can, but you will have problems by loosing the applied material and maybe spend sometime reassign it.

Why that happens?
- Wings3D is going to use one material for each UVmapped object. So, if you select a set of faces from a object and unwrap it - at the first time - a new material named <object_name>_auv will be created and the previous material you had assigned to that set will become unused.
Then, when you select the next set of faces from the same object and unwrap it no new material will be created. You must to notice the AutoUV window will be shown only the new UV mesh and the background image is the one created in the previous step.

Assuming in the first time you enabled the Background->Color and Draw Edges option in Create Texture to get the mesh (UV island) drawn on the texture image in order to paint it further in another app, then if you keep the same settings for Create Texture, this time it will overwriting the texture image you just create in the first step.

To avoid that, you can choose use the texture image for the Background option. This way the UV mesh will be drawn cumulatively.
Again, I was assuming you want to use only one image to keep the texture for the entire object.

The previous used material becomes unused. And so on...
But, you can to reassign the faces to the previous material just after you unwrap the mesh and when you assign the texture image to the material everything should to be ok.

In this scenario, maybe the best practice would be to create Selection Groups for every set of faces you want so assign a material and unwrap the entire object first.
- Select the set of faces and create a Selection Group;
- UVmap the faces - set the cuts in AutoUV Segmenting and unwrap them;
- In AutoUV Editor window you still don't need to use Create Texture - you can ignore the window by now;

Repeat the process until you finish to process all the object's faces and when you reach the last set of faces, then in AutoUV Editor window:
- You can ensure the proportions are OK. I body selection mode select all the islands and use Scale->Normalize Sizes;
- Arrange the islands the way you want. You can use the Selection Groups window to select the islands (that will have the same material) if you need to arrange them close to each other;
- When you finish the islands arrangement, now you can create the texture image that will be used as reference for you to paint it.

You can now use the Selection Group window to recall the faces you want to define a new material. When you have painted the texture you just need to assign it to that material.


I suggest you to try this process using a simple cube to see how it can work.

p.s. JFYI, if you need to save a project which has materials that are not assigned to any object you must to use the option File->Save Unused Materials.

[digitaldavinci]

Thank you for this! I saw those videos before but one has to go through with their own project to really see what they did not pick up the first time. Application of knowledge. One can read about starting a camp fire. One has to go and actually start one to see what the process entails.
With that said the obvious struck me and I found the back door process that I was suspicious about.
If one has an object that they would like to apply different material to then split that object into separate objects and uv map those. The operational flaw appears when trying to apply multiple materials to one object by segregating faces into groups and then resorting back to a one uvmesh. You can go down that path and run into a lot of precipices and dead ends..
So now I revamp my process to separate the main object into many to achieve the degree of separation I need.
Or I can just cut the main object object up for one uvmesh and then use the tools and selections in Unity to make the different assignments.
No great loss up till this point. This UVmesh effort was a new approach for me in my graphics efforts.

Thank you Micheus for your answers of corrections and approaches. This straightened me out. I believe at this point I need to break the main object into separate objects to alleviate any more anomalies.
The final answer is I specifically have separate objects to deal with and I am working on the best import to Unity at the same time. Although what you stated can truly be an answer for some other effort in the future.

[digitaldavinci]

Well this UVmapping learning curve was worth it in all aspects.
I wanted to produce 3 things:
1: Get a wings3d obj into Unity without a mesh. Accomplished.
2: Get a Wings3d object with multiple UVmeshes into Unity. Accomplished.
3: Get multiple wings3d object with one UVmesh. Accomplished. Still needs work in Unity though. I chose Amplify Shader and this allows very professional displays. With Wings and ASE I can create models and effects like what the big production houses do! VIOLA'

The Wings3d mesh that has projected normals seems to be the answer.
I also found that this process circumvents the 'last material used' problem in wings3d.
But of the 3 things here that are no doubt useful in any number of different scenarios. The idea was to nail down the 3 ways...
Because YOU CAN MIX OR MATCH AND REALLY GET SCREWED UP RESULTS that will not allow you to perform valid operations.
I press on with the UVmesh knowledge under my belt.
Wings3d kicks butt. The shear flexibility is mind blowing.

[micheus]

Good to hear you are making progress and learning how to deal with the "Wings way" to work.

[digitaldavinci]

Yep. I should have posted I have 15 years experience in Moray-POVray and 35 years Autocad/cadcam experience. I have wanted 3d modelling ever since I was a mainframe back in the late 70s. We are finally here.

[micheus]

I should have posted I have 15 years experience in Moray-POVray and 35 years Autocad/cadcam experience. I have wanted 3d modelling ever since I was a mainframe back in the late 70s.

Good to know. In this case, I'm the beginner in this talk.