Sometimes the Internet is Awesome.
Yesterday I steadied myself for a task that I had been putting off for a long time...
UV Texture Mapping. It’s the processes of wrapping a 2D image onto a 3D model to make it pretty. And I’d never messed with that before really.
Texture Mapping. Texturemapping? I’m so new to it I’m not sure if it’s one word or two.
Imma go with two.
Texture Mapping.
yeah.
Anyway...
You gotta squint your brain real hard just to wrap your mind around what it is. But don’t worry, once you do... it doesn’t get any easier.
I had an idea of what I needed to do, but how to do it was another thing. I asked AI and it got me part way there. But there wasn’t any intuitive way to create what I thought I needed.
I was making very slow progress... despite myself. I was about to call it a day. I found a few YouTube playlists to watch... later... and walked away for a break. Then I made the following post on BlueSky:
Two very smart people jumped in with ideas right away. They saved me MUCH time, at the expense of some of theirs. And I am VERY grateful. It’s increasingly rare to find online communities that still actually feel like communities, but BlueSky does.
So for any who may come this way, here are two examples of people being AWESOME on the internet. As a response to my post they offered more help than anyone should ever expect from a social comment. And they weren’t just randos...
Fidel Destro is a technical artist. That means he’s forgotten more about both math and blender than I’ll ever know. It also means he can make insane things happen on a computer screen at will. Blender is a tool he probably knows better than his backyard and I’m asking the most basic of questions, but he jumped right in and helped me understand the UV tool better. If I didn’t have it backwards... I was certainly driving it on the wrong side of the street.
Before he jumped in I was trying to perfectly line up screenshots so I could select the negative space. I remember at one point stating loudly (I was alone) “THERE IS NO WAY REAL GAME DEVS DO THIS!!!” And they don’t. Fidel found a nicer way to say “Hey... click the thing you want. There ya’ go.” The next time I need to make a UV map I am gonna freak out much less.
And then Adam came along. You may know him from games like “A Monster's Expedition” or “Gobsmaked”. A real gamedev with multiple games out there being played by actual people! Despite that, and being a family man, Adam took the time to show me how I can accomplish what I wanted to do... but better... AND some ways to optimize the models I’m using for the game! WOW!
There’s still LOTS to figure out, and I’ll have to add a decent chunk of time to learn about and optimize all the models, BUT... I’M VERY HAPPY to be put behind like this. Thanks to Fidel & Adam, I have a better understanding of blender, a path forward, AND an unexpected optimization tip!
That’s community for ya’ folks.
I’ll be digging into how & where to learn the details behind these tips in the coming days, and also reworking my timeline. Dates will move further out, but I'd much rather get the optimization stuff figured out and documented early.
It may mean my initial play test doesn't happen in January. But when it does happen, it'll be a better experience.
Thanks Fidel & Adam! Class acts.