Celestia Forums

How can I edit the texture surface of a torus in Blender or Anim8tor?

There are strange asymmetric surface texture areas on the torus...

I'd use a cylindrical UV map in Anim8or of a surface texture map created with an equirectangular projection, with separate maps for the outer and inner sides of the torus.

The screengrab below shows a single surface texture map applied to a torus so you can see it's uniform. Next I'd use the point editor to select just the inner faces of the torus and apply another texture to them.



Added after 45 minutes 50 seconds:
and here's a quick hack.

The map around the outside is 8Kx1K: the same map appended to itself 4 times. The one around the inside is 4Kx1K.

Obviously one should also be more careful than I was when selecting faces on the inner surface.

Selden, thanks! I use an 8Kx8K surface map and Cylindrical projection is not working for me.

I had to use Spherical projection...

By the way I managed to avoid using 3ds format with Anim8tor. I use the obj format to create meshes in Blender, after that I use Anim8tor to open it (not import it) and apply textures to it. The exported obj file can be opened in cmodview, the saved cmod file can be fixed in cmodconverter, and after that I can edit the ascii file...

Added after 11 minutes 27 seconds:
Can you apply a normalmap texture to a torus?

It's not working for me...not even with a dxt5nm texture...

Added after 49 minutes 15 seconds:
Torusworld with specular lights and a moving cloud layer:

In principle, you can apply a normalmap to anything, but I've never tried. My modelling objectives usually are simple enough that I don't use them at all.

FWIW, I usually design an initial surface texture using dimensions which best fit the object I'm modelling, then (when I'm finished messing with the image) scale it to three different powers-of-two: a power-of-two so it performs better and three resolutions to allow the person viewing it to select a low resolution for performance or high resolution when they want to do a close inspection.

I'm not sure what you mean by "apply" -- whether as a texture specified within the model or as a texture specified in its SSC file. I tend to prefer doing the latter because then you can provide AltSurface directives in addition to hi/med/lo resolution surface textures which the viewer can select.

That torus looks pretty good! Is that a separate cloud texture I'm seeing? How is it being applied?

Thanks! These are actually three identical meshes together, one surface texture mesh and two cloud texture meshes using alpha channels with bigger/smaller radius and much smaller RotationPeriods.

I can't use any atmosphere commands in the ssc file, they are not working properly in this case.

Normalmaps are not working, neither in the scc file nor in the cmod file.

please share

It is not finished yet, I'm working on adding a normal map to the add-on.

OK, here we go. I was able to make the normalmap work...kinda.



Help!

What is going on?

Have you ever seen something similar in Celestia?

I use dxt5nm normalmap texture in the cmod file, and the "tangent f3" command. I generated the tangents in cmodview.



Added after 47 minutes:
OK, I solved it. I messed up the normals in the cmod file. Don't ask why and how.