Anyone? I am very eager to continue work on this model :P.

Originally posted by HellJumper:

Some items allow bigger textures, but really it's about prioritizing and optimizing. I wouldn't be surprised if all of those feathers used the exact same UVs (you can overlap uvs for symmetrical parts). Any high detail parts should take up larger space on the UVs. I don't really know how else to explain it.

I am working on a different model now that is mirrored twice in itself and where i really need to overlap all the faces that are the same in shape and are supposed to be the same color after texturing too.
The amount of identical faces is 8 in this case, so i could save 7 times texture space when overlapping in contrast to having them all next to each other.

Questions:
1.: How can i make sure i overlap the UV-Islands correctly?
2.: How can i bake the surface and how can i make a lightmap if the faces will be lit up differently by my lightsource, but have the same space on the map?

Greetings, VII.

I second that notion :)

Hm. Is it not true that most modelers will create high-poly models to bring detail in through maps, and then put these detailed maps over the lower-poly models? That might also be part of the issue. That the detail is not only "painted on" so to say? But maybe i understood something wrong :O.

Hey again.

I thought that i can not be the only one that had issues with the following topic, so i wanted to add another open question to the one i posed before.

"How do you more advanced content creators deal with the limited amount of pixels at your disposal?"

I did try to reserve UV map-space to the more important parts of the model, but even then when i upload my model+texture files the 256x256 limitation softens all the detail i had out, making the end result look blurry and cheap.

And then on the other hand i see items like these:
http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/129963137?appid=570

and i wonder how the creators managed to put so much detail into so many little ornaments and decoration.
Does ist have something to do with the underlying base model?
Because i keep my model very straight forward geometry-wise to be honest.
Mainly due to the triangle restrictions (I must also admit i still fail to understand how most people work with high-/low poly models and why).

Again, i appreciate any thoughts/insight on the matter :).

Hey Helljumper!
Thanks a lot for the quick response.
I do not think it has anything to do with the textures, because the error would also appear when i export JUST the .obj to work with it in another program (i have tried sculptris and mudbox so far, and both give me similar results).
In these program some faces rather appear not to be connected to each other, than wrongly textured. The object can not be sculpted on like a solid, 3D object but colapses at the slightest smoothing (or other operation) due to consisting of 2D surfaces in a 3D arrangement.
Not sure if that makes sense to you :D.

I will try the Normal recalcuation and report back :).
Thanks!

Edit: Well flipped normals must have been at least part of my problem. Now i understand why lighting would be so amazingly hard :D.

Hey everyone.
- First of, thank you so much for your video-tutorials HellJumper,
i just started working with models and textures and your explanations felt like the perfect way to get started :).

My question is the following:
Can anybody tell me why a mesh that looks perfectly fine within Blender, will oftentimes be displayed wrong in other programs (including Dota 2) after exporting as .obj, .smd and probably also others..
By "wrong" i mean that the faces of the mesh are not closed the way they should be and the object has holes/gaps at certain places.

I thank anyone for suggestions or explanations :).
Also, of course i'd provide more information on the subject if needed.

Happy modeling everyone!