Texture Layers 2 Review
Reviewed by David Duberman
Of the various crafts involved in creating virtual 3D worlds, texture mapping is arguably the most important. You can create utterly masterful geometry, animation, and lighting, but without convincing textures you might as well have built your scene out of lumps of clay. You might suppose that, with 3ds max's capable built-in mapping tools UVW Map and Unwrap UVW, that there's no market for add-on modifiers, but you'd be wrong. At least, that's the likely reasoning behind the recent release of Texture Layers 2 by developer Mankua Software (i.e., Diego Castano).
Texture Layers 2 can be regarded as an enhanced version of 3ds max's UVW Map modifier, with a number of distinct advantages over that venerable worthy. It starts with all the same basic mapping options: planar, cylindrical with optional cap (that is, flat mapping on the cylinder ends), spherical, shrink wrap, box, and so on. But it goes on to offer several useful new mapping options.
Of these, character artists might find Pelt mapping to be the most useful. It's pretty complex, but to perhaps oversimplify, it automatically stretches out a complex mesh so that the UV coordinates don't overlap. It also gives you an editor with control points corresponding to the vertices on the edge of the mapped region. You can transform these control points using standard tools. Moving a point works like soft selection: It has the greatest effect on nearby texture vertices, and the effect diminishes with distance. You can also add and delete control points, and transform symmetrical points in tandem. The software does a pretty good job of determining symmetry, but you can also define symmetrical pairs manually. Unlike max's Unwrap UVW editor, the Pelt editor doesn't let you view the texture map under the vertices, but any changes are reflected in real time in the viewports. For those grappling with texturing difficult organic surfaces, Pelt could be the answer to your prayers.
Another impressive mapping type is Spline. As its name suggests, Spline uses a user-defined spline to specify mapping. In effect, it's a cylindrical mapping method that can switch directions as often as you like, and change size over the length of the spline. Thus it's easy to use a single texture over the length of a unevenly sized tree branch, say, without having unrealistic texture scaling changes on parts of the branch. Spline lets you use three graph curves to control U tiling (around the circumference), V tiling (along the length, and U offset (the seam placement). The latter curve lets you vary the placement of the seam from point to point along the length of the cylinder, so it can twist or meander as you like.
The other two unique mapping types are Free Form and UVW Frame. Free Form uses a 2D version of the familiar FFD (free-form deformation) lattice with the same interactivity; transforming points changes the mapping in real time. One particularly nice feature of Free Form mapping is that it can inherit the shape of the previous mapping type, such as cylinder or sphere, although it's still just a planar mapping that's wrapped into that shape. And UVW Frame deforms the modified object's mapping space based on the mapping space of another object. It's pretty powerful, but a bit difficult to come to grips with. There's also a UVW Data mapping type that lets you save and load UVW data in a disk file.
So far, you might be wondering why the modifier is called Texture Layers. That's real power of this tool: In a single modifier, you can apply as many different mapping types to an object as you like, using the Select Faces sub-object level (and other methods) to specify where on the object each group should go. However, the face-selection mode doesn't let you ignore back-facing faces, so you're better off pre-selecting face groups as named selection sets, and then calling each up for the different mapping groups.
Fortunately, Texture Layers 2 has a special command to get named face and edge selection sets from below it in the stack. You can also specify edge selection sets for use with the Pelt map, for defining the borders of texture groups. The manual refers to a script written by MAXScript guru Borislav (Bobo) Petrov for automatically selecting edges from material ID groups, and says it's available on the Discreet support Website, but apparently it's no longer there. Fortunately, I was able to obtain a copy of the script from Bobo, and reprint it here for your convenience:
macroScript SelMatIDEdges category:"ForumHelp"
(
on isEnabled return selection.count == 1 and classof selection[1].baseobject == Editable_Poly
on execute do
(
theEP = selection[1].baseobject
edgeSelArray = #()
eCount = polyOp.getNumEdges theEP
for e = 1 to eCount do
(
theFaces = (polyOp.getFacesUsingEdge theEP #(e)) as array
if theFaces.count == 2 then
(
if polyOp.getFaceMatID theEP theFaces[1] != polyOp.getFaceMatID theEP theFaces[2] then
append edgeSelArray e
)
)
polyOp.setEdgeSelection theEP edgeSelArray
max Modify Mode
modPanel.setCurrentObject theEP
subObjectLevel = 2
)
)
To use it, copy everything from "macroScript" to the final close parenthesis (inclusive) into a text editor and save it as "3dsmax6\UI\MacroScripts\SelMatIDEdges.mcr" (no quotes). Substitute the directory name in which your copy of 3ds max resides for "3dsmax6," if necessary. Then run max, go to Customize > Customize User Interface, access Category > ForumHelp, and assign the script to a hotkey, menu bar, etc.
Here's Bobo's explanation of how it works:
- It expects a single EditablePoly object (Base Object must be EPoly, there could be modifiers on top, no EditPoly modifier max 7 support yet) to be selected to enable the button.
- It operates on the MatIDs stored in the faces, not based on the Multi/Sub Material assigned. This means that you can create a box with 10x10x10 segments, collapse to EPoly, add a Bend Modifier and run the script.
- Result: The outer edges of the box in the base object below Bend should become selected, because a Box has 6 MatIDs pre-assigned. Assigning a MultiSub material with only 2 sub-materials will NOT affect the result of the script.
Speaking of Editable Poly, I discovered that Pelt mapping requires that an object be editable poly format only, and not have been editable mesh at any point in its life. I tried using it with a head model created elsewhere that loaded as an editable mesh, and even after converting to editable poly I couldn't get Pelt to work with it.
Back to the layers aspect: Texture Layers lets you specify as many different mapping groups as you like, each defined by a mapping type applied to a specific selection set. Of course, you can set standard parameters such as tiling and transforms to each group's mapping, but you can also specify attenuation. This feature lets you define where, within the mapping coordinates a texture should start fading out, and the overall distance on each axis (U, V, and W) it takes to fade out completely. Thus it's relatively easy to blend among many different surfaces on different parts of an object's surface. You can specify the attenuation within the modifier, for each group, or within a special map type included with the software.
So, overall I'm favorably impressed with Texture Layers 2, but it's not without flaws. While working with the modifier I discovered a couple of bugs, confirmed by the developer: You can't animate its transforms, and you can't undo keyboard edits of numeric parameters (no problem undoing spinner changes, though). These should be fixed in a month or two. Also, in the Pelt editor, you can delete the control points one at a time only. I also encountered some minor stability issues: random crashes, and rendering blank frames.
Unlike max's UVW Map gizmo, the Texture Layers 2 mapping gizmo changes appearance when you change the Tiling parameters. If you increase tiling, the gizmo shrinks to show the area of actual mapping, as opposed to repetitions of the mapping due to the tiling. This is helpful in that sense, but it does tend to make the gizmo harder to find.
The reference manual is sketchy in parts, but overall it's pretty helpful. I found the tutorials to be less so, though. They're long and detailed, but they don't go into much explanation, and they don't touch on some of the more difficult aspects of the software that really could've used some detailed, hands-on instruction. There are also some lame mistakes like telling the user to press the 3 and 4 keys for shaded and edged-face display, when it's actually the F3 and F4 keys. But if you're using software like this, you should be pretty familiar with the basic concepts of texture mapping and max usage in general, and probably won't have much trouble coming to terms with Texture Layers 2's extraordinary power.
In sum, Texture Layers 2 is good software, and could possibly help with some mapping situations that might otherwise be insoluble. With a bit more work, it could be great. Hopefully Mankua will create a demo version so you can give it a try before spending $300 on an unknown product.
http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/205477/Action/FullPreview
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