hello all! i'm finally taking the plunge and trying something bigger than a rug or painting. but i've run into a bit of a confusing issue, and was partly requesting a booth seat recolour template. i've attached a screengrab so you can see - plainly - what the problem is. as you can see, the pattern doesn't line up in certain places which i can sort out myself with time, but do you see the way some sections have split into two? looking at the texture i can't see why this would happen, so i'd really appreciate a bit of direction!

the only thing i can think of, is that the texture itself is stretched wider than it appears on the object, and as such is really half the length i've been texturing for - hence the 'split' is merely the end of that section of texture, and i've just been texturing it wrong.

thanks in advance,
alison
xxx

It doesn't actually look too bad. You'd get that effect in real life if there was a seam in the fabric.

i'll have another go and see if i can get rid of it - thanks for the encouragement though! *grin*

if i figure it out i'll make a template for others.

Are you using UVWmap for texture layout? If not, consider learning what it is snd obtaining it with it, it would be much easier to figure out which areas of texture are used, and where seams are. Check the tutorials section, I believe there should be references to some free uvwmapping programs. Since booth consists of two components - normal and corner - you'll need to obtain both uvwmaps, and combine them into one texture, which you can use as reference then.

ahhh, thanks jasana, that must be what i'm doing wrong.
i was using SimPE to extract the textures only (not cloning, so i didn't have access to the mesh for UV mapping purposes), and simply applying my texture over the top of the original as a kind of template.
thanks for the pointer, i'll try a complete clone and get UVmapper onto it.

[UPDATE]

i've just tried retexturing, deliberately leaving out all but the areas i am having trouble with (see screenie), and i'm still experiencing this intermittent 'cutting' of the texture on the cushions.
i'm definitely going to scrap this recolour and try a full clone following j's advice, but i'm really not sure if it's the answer. seems to me i'd just benefit from knowing my own template better! *looks ashamed and hides under the bed*

i've also uploaded a screenie of the reworked, half-textured texture so you can see exactly what i'm doing... or doing wrong

Guess I worded it not clear enough you don't need to scrap the recolor - you just need to obtain uvw to improve seams. And you not necessarily need to clone for that - you can simply use Object Finder to find the GMDCs.
Since booth is actually more than one GMDC, it's easier to miss something :o so I extracted the maps myself, and attaching them to this post. Each uvw is saved as png image on transparent background, so it should be easy to 'overlay' it and see where things go wrong.

Booth includes 6 different states - single, east end, west end, connector, convex corner and concave corner. I guess it's clear by their names which one is which? By the way, your screenshot doesn't include single and convex corner versions - so they probably have problems which you're unaware of

Mapping overlaps are few - convex and concave corner would be most problematic - but there are some seams which put some restrictions to the texture sizes
Look at east end, west end, connector, and single mappings. Of them, east end and west end are the only ones that mapped plainly (and no mirroring, I checked). To match their scale and edge seams, single has seam in the middle - unused piece of texture - and connector has overlap in the middle - same piece is used twice. So your main problem would be to workaround this piece somehow If you reduce scale a bit, you can fit light/dark circle column in that part - so on connectors there'll be double column, and on singles it will be missing.

Good luck with it The parren is nice, I hope you'll complete it

aha!! jasana you're a genius!! i'll do a rescale and hope for the best.
*smacks forhead* i didn't even think of just searching for the gmdc, i should be shot for being a doofus lol thankyou for extracting them for me, and for making the uvs!
if i get this booth finished i'll definitely upload it for you :-D

[EDIT]

ah, i forgot to ask, when i extract the textures for the booth i only get a single file (which is what i've been using). do you know where the others are located? scanning through the info for the booth doesn't seem to help me locate them i realise i'm probably just being thick about this, but hey, we were all new once, eh?

There's just one texture (TXTR resource), but 6 GMDC resources - each of which contain 'cushion' subset, each of which has its own UVWmap. They use the same texture, but it wrapped differently around them - UVWmap determines the way how texture is wrapped around the mesh. UVWmap is stored in the mesh, and the only way to obtain it at this point is export the mesh, open it in a mapping program, or 3D-editing program capable of editing mapping, and get mapping from there (i.e. make a screenshot). There should be some free mapping programs; someone who uses them, please suggest what leushy could use in the future

I would recommend the freeware program LithUnwrap for this.

It is an old version (the new one is not free) but it has everything you need to get a perfectly sized uv_map for your object with relative ease.

You can get it here:

http://files.seriouszone.com/download.php?fileid=198

Now, how to do this -

First, I do recommend that you make a clone of the Maxis object - not to save, or ever to use in the game at all, but it will make it easy to obtain all the necessary files you need, including the original Maxis texture for a reference and you can also look at the other parts of your clone to see which parts of the mesh are actually going to use which texture image and which are recolorable parts if you aren't sure. Once you are finished making your uv_maps you can delete this clone.

OK, so once you have your clone made you can first look at the Material OverRides if necessary to see which mesh subset(s) are recolorable.

If there is only one MMAT then only one mesh group is colorable, if there are two then you have two recolorable parts.
The "subset" line in the MMAT tells you which mesh subset will be colored.
The "name" line in the MMAT tells you the texture image this subset will use.

Go to the named texture image for a look. Make a note of the size of the texture image - you will want this later so you can save your uv_map in the same size.

Now, go to the Geometric Data Container. On the list of the mesh subsets, un-check everything except the one that you are interested in. Now export this, as what SimPE calls a "Maya Object" file (.obj)

We are done with SimPE, close it and start LithUnwrap.

There are a lot of options in LithUnwrap but don't let it overwhelm you, most are for creating or editing uv_maps and we are simply going to get a reference image for the already existing one.

OK, first use File/Model/Open to open your saved .obj file

You will probably not see anything at first, or maybe just a bit at the very bottom - due to a quirk in SimPE's .obj exporter, the uv_map is displaced but it is easy to fix.

Go to the menu Select/All
Now use Edit/Move/Arbitrary - a small window will open.

Here I should mention the meaning of U and V - U = left/right on the UV map, and V = up/down. In other words, they are the same as X and Y in your graphics editor.

Positive U values will move to the right, negative to the left
Positive V values move down, negative will move up

Now, since SimPE has displaced our UV_map down by one, all we need to do is enter -1 in the Translate section of the window. Then click [Apply], and then [Close]

You will now see the uv_map in it's proper location.

There is one more thing to check, since sometimes Maxis has uv_mapped things in an odd way.

On the View menu, choose Zoom/Free

Now you can zoom the whole workspace by drag/click with your mouse and moving up/down. Zoom out to see if any parts are still off the work area (which is surrounded by a rectangle)

If there are any, first use View/Select (this will allow you to select areas while the view is still zoomed out)

Now select the parts that are outside the workspace by dragging a box around them with your mouse and use Edit/Move again to put them where they belong. If a part is off to the right, move it left by 1 (U = -1), etc.

Once everything is in the work area, we can finally save the uv_map.

On the View menu, choose Reset to put everything back where it was before you zoomed.

Now use Edit/UV Map/Save

You will get a window for the filename first. Name it as you like, then [Save]

You get a second window with the options - here enter the size you got from the original texture image - I just leave the groups section set to black and white, and save it.

And that's it, you now have your uv_map of the object and you can delete the cloned object and .obj file that we used.

Now as Jasana said, this particular object has several different "sections" that all share the same texture image. With this kind of object you would have to repeat the whole procedure for each different GMDC and then combine all these uv_maps into one to get a true uv_map for the whole thing - but I hope I have given enough info to get you started anyway.

thankyou SO much for taking the time to explain this to me fully, pixel! i'll follow your advice and should hopefully get this object finished soon! *hug*