@augold45 what
kitkat is true. But sometimes I feel that with wood grain, using that process can sometimes lead to a distorted or wrong direction of the wood grain flow.
Object recoloring is an easy as well as a hard process and this depends on the object that you want to recolor. The process is easy if the uvmapping was done in a simple way were all the sides are mapped in the same direction. In this situation you can use both a plain color as well as a wood grain in texturing or applying an image to your mesh.
But what will happen if the object is not mapped in the same direction, but is mapped in a combined direction of both ways. Texturing here using a plain color will be easy.
But for a wood grain, this will not be easy because just apply the image without taking the directional mapping of the joined mapping will lead to a distorted texturing which will not look nice on the mesh when applied
As can be seen from the above, the wood grain applied to the texturing appears distorted because there is no directional flow of the wood grain on the uvmap taking into account the directional flow of the uvmap in different direction.
So here I will show how I go about my recolouring an object that is mapped combined in different direction and joined together in different direction mapping.When doing a recolourof an object, I have the ability to separate the mesh groups into different groups if I so wish depending on the complexity of the uvmap, or on the texturing material I want to use. This lets me know what is what and if I want to use different materials in a certain place, I can determine that from the uvmap.
If I am using a plain colour like say a plain white or blue colour, then it’s easy and I do not need to separate the meshes uvmap. All I do is just apply the colour as shown in the second image above. But if I have to use a wood grain texture, then I will have to separate the mesh uvmap based on the directional flow of the wood grain texture. Using the Blooming Beauty” Wall Painting as an example, let me explain my process.
STEP ONE
When I want to do a recolor of an object, the first thing I do is find the object,
The I export the image
And the model mesh
After exporting the image and the mesh, my next step is to open the object image that I exported in my image editing program. I use both photoshop and paint.net. But for this I will be using Paint.net. The first thing I do is desaturate the image and adjust it to get a gray scale image.
STEP TWO
Once I have gotten my gray scale for the image, the next step I take is to open my mesh in blender and export the mesh in wavelength Obj format. One this is done close blender since all I needed was the mesh and will not be needing it again.
My next step here, is that I open the mesh I had exported from blender in my UV mapping software so as to get the uvmap of the mesh.
Please note, that I could have done this in blender, but I normally prefer using Lithunwrap. This is the software I use for most of my UVmapping . From the uvmap, we can see that the mapping was done in a two directional flow
Like I said before, the type of image am using determines how I use the uvmap image. If the uv was mapped in one directional flow, then I simply apply my texture to the desaturated image be it plain color or wood grain, and apply it to the mesh.
But on the other hand, if the image was mapped in a non-one directional flow like this,
While using a plain colour will generate a nice texture on the mesh making it okay
But for a wood grain, the directional flow will be distorted since we have a two directional mapping which will lead to distorted final look on the mesh.
From the image above, we can see that the wood grain looks weird on the mesh as it does not have a directional flow on the mesh. And this is what I need to fix.
STEP THREE
In lithunwrap, I can group the directional flow of the uvmap by separating the uvmap into different groups and exporting the uv maps separately so that when I apply the wood texture and later combine them together, the wood grain will flow correct in its directional flow. In Lithunwrap, I do the following
I highlight the part of the uvmap I want in a different group so as to help with the texturing, then I go tp Groups/modify, and a modify group box will open, click on add, and a add group box will open, under description, enter the name you want the group to have and then click ok. Having done this, I came up with the two direction I want the wood grain to move in.
Horizontal
Vertical
Once I have this, I export the separate uvmaps and open both in my image editing software. I used paint.net for this. I will use the below wood grain for the texturing
STEP FOUR
After opening the two exported uvmap for the mesh that highlights the directional flow, I also open the wood grain I want to use. In paint.net, use Ctrl+A, to highlight the wood grain, Ctrl+C to copy it, then open the vertical uvmap of the mesh and use Ctrl+Shift+V to paste the wood grain on another layer above the uvmap.
When the wood grain in on a different layer above the uvmap,
A- Select the uvmap layer
B- Select the magic wand
C- Click on the back space on the uvmap to select it
D- Select the Wood grain layer
E- Press delete on your keyboard to delete the part of the woodgrain not needed.
After this the final image will look like this
When you have finished this, select the second uvmap that is horizontal. Select the woodgrain and go to image and select rotate 90 degree clockwise so as to rotate the wood grain texture into a horizontal form.
Follow the same step for that was used for the vertical image to generate the wood grain for the horizontal uvmap. If done well you will have this
STEP FIVE
Once this is achieved, we can combine the two uvmap image textures. Just use Ctrl+A to select one of the texture and use Ctrl+Shift+v to paste the selected image into a different layer on the other image. The final result will look like this
Now copy the original grain image and paste it to a deferent layer on the combined image for the two uvmap, and move it to the bottom. Once done you can save this as a .pdn file so as to ease the pain of going through the process again in case you want to use it later again.
Now remember the gray scale image of the mesh that was made in step one, select it and paste it into a different layer of the above image and move it to the bottom of the layer
Select the first image of the uvmapped woodgrain, and use the merge down arrow to merge all the wood grain into a single layer.
When this has been done, select the wood grain layer, and follow the instruction on the image below
Then flatted the image
You can save your image texture and import into your mesh in S4S. Below is a comparison of the two results. The left shows the result of not taking the directional flow of mesh and the right shows the result of taking the directional flow of the mesh mapping into account
You can also do other things like this
I hope this helps you and others who are into or want to recolor objects in the future, and in paying attention to the object uvmapping before recolouring