Texture Size when Pushing a Face

[DMclean]

I often put a billboard with texture into a model, then Push or Pull the face to give it thickness. Then I'll use Offset Line or Outline to match shapes on the billboard and push or pull those to give them relief. It's a fast way to model a facade from an elevation photo. The only downside is that when I push or pull a face, the "new" extruded edges get mapped with the texture at a default size, rather than at the size that the texture was originally mapped onto the surface. It would be really nice if it just cubic mapped at the same size. Is there a way to do this that I am missing.

 

Right now I go back and Map the texture on cubically every once in a while to reset it, and that is relatively easy when I haven't eliminated part of the billboard, and the texture is just mapping from somewhere nice like the corner or the middle, but if I lopped off one part of it, the texture map origin is outside the object so I don't have a nice easy snap to set the point to. If the pushes and pulls just kept the same mapping, this wouldn't be a problem. All the new faces would retain the same mapping until I changed it because I wanted to.

 

Thanks,

 

 

Doug

 

[Tech]

Hi Doug,

 

If you offset the line or outline that is adjacent to the face, then it should maintain the mapping, but if you offset one from "farther away" then this will use default mapping for that part.  If you find a case where this is not true, please Undo, Copy the object to a New Project, move another copy of the object, offset the desired part to show the problem, save, and send the file so we can take a look.

[DMclean]

The problem is not with the face that is offset losing mapping, but with the "side" faces of the extrusion. It happens right off the start. When I bring the billboard in, it is mapped as flat. If I edit the mapping to be cubic and then "extrude" a face by pulling it, then the front and back faces of the "cube" are mapped the same size, but the sides and top are mapped at a smaller size (looks like about 48" square which I think is what the default map is set at...

 

The problem then continues. "Front" and "Back" faces are all fine, it is the "edges" which go to default.

 

Doug

 

 

[Tech]

Hi Doug,

 

Ok, now we understand.  When you create new objects that use a texture, the Default Size for that texture is used.  Therefore, when you create your Billboard object, if you then edit the associated material and set the Material: Default Texture Size to the same as the size of the Billboard, then you should get what you want.  Does that help?

 

(And perhaps we could automatically set this size to the same as the billboard in the future...)

[DMclean]

That should be a pretty good workaround.

 

I'm often working with elevations that I don't know the scale of, or want to be flexible with. I'll bring the billboard in, and then rescale it with the texture resize being "locked" to the billboard, so that even if I had the mapping size default set at the beginning it would now be off and I'd have to reset it. What I really want is for the "default" to adjust dynamically with the object, always being the same as the overall mapping. Now of course what is going to happen if I remap a part of the object with another texture at some point is going to become an issue, but if the "edge" map scale could be tied to whatever face it was extruded from it would be great.

 

Make sense?

 

Doug

 

 

[Des]

I've experience with the same.

My workaround (from memory) is to make a copy of the billboard in the same position on another temporary layer. Then if the mapping changes after manipulating the original, I use the copy attributes tool from the duplicated object to the edited one to reset the mapping. Just turn off the copy to layer option in the copy attributes tool so it doesn't change the layer.

 

Des

[setz]

This would also be a good place to be able to use the old Get and Set Attributes Tools.  As soon as you create the Billlboard, you could Get Attributes and then the mapping, style, smoothing etc, etc, is stored in a buffer until quitting FZ and would be available to Set at any time during the work session.  Would love to have these tools back.

[DMclean]

I've experience with the same.

My workaround (from memory) is to make a copy of the billboard in the same position on another temporary layer. Then if the mapping changes after manipulating the original, I use the copy attributes tool from the duplicated object to the edited one to reset the mapping. Just turn off the copy to layer option in the copy attributes tool so it doesn't change the layer.

 

Des

 

Thanks Des. I've done the same sort of things at times, but your solution gives me way to much credit for working in an organized fashion. I usually start out that way with the best of intentions to remain so, but usually I'm moving stuff around so much and trying things out in rapid succession and the problem shows up about 15 unremembered steps after I should have made the copy ... ... of course there are those infinite Undo's.... Redoing the mapping isn't usually that horrific, it would just be nice if the system defaulted to having the same mapping applied to the object sides when you push and pull faces.

 

Doug