Back
Gmax Tutorials
Mapping your mesh
- Learning UVW Unwrapping is probably one of the most important parts, in order to enhance
the graphical level. But while assigning the textures is easy, the UVW Unwrapping might be difficult
depending on your mesh's structure and shape. It's often easier to UVW Unwrap a box in comparison
to an object with more seams, like a tire or a torch.
The UVW Unwrapping tool in Gmax looks different and has features that might be limited if your used to 3ds max, but in both cases it's hard to UVW Unwrap, especially when it comes to making things seamless.
- To start out with, you'll need to know which of the 10 textures in your library shall be used on the object. Select your
mesh, right-click and
and then press Convert To Editable Mesh
. Now change the selection to Element 
- If you only
wish to apply the texture on some of your mesh, choose face. Now move your mouse towards your mesh and select it.
Scroll Down the menu to the right and find the SG Properties table. Just above it, there is a section named Material, in here you will be able to change. If you organized your library in alphabetic order, each number should represent a letter in Re-Volt. In this case, A is representing 1, so I will keep my house-roof's ID as 1. Please note that you cannot give 1 triangle more than 1 material ID.
- You can find the UVW Unwrap tool inside the Modifier list
. By clicking it,
the right-menu will change and the modifier in stack, just above Editable Mesh. Below that you can find the
list of parameters. By pressing Edit a window named Edit UVW's will pop-up. 3ds max users might
recognize some of it, but will probably notice that quite important features like the Copy-Paste and the face-
or edgemode is missing. At least I didn't find them, yet.
- Now, to keep everything nice and organized, start by giving the whole Material name in the Name field you see below
the sphere picture in the top-left corner of The Material Editor. I will uggest to call it the same name as the model
you are making is named, but the descision is up to you. But by even giving it a name, will help you finding it in the
Material Library when you need it again. After you've named the whole material, we also need to give each submaterial a
short name, so it is easier for us to find what we want. Usually I am just giving each material it's letter, so Number 1
is named A and Number 10 is named J, but you could also write a short name that reminds you about what this material contains.
The Numbers you see in the next left column is ID Numbers for each material. This is the way Gmax organizes and remember what Material to use. As the fields are white, you can change the ID Numbers for each submaterial, but as they aleready are in the right order, I don't see why there is a reason to change them to something else. When you are done organizing your material, it will look pretty much like mine does on the picture to the right.
- But Gmax still offers us loads of opportunities. UVW Unwrapping is basically all about moving small vertex'es
around, that has function as cordinates. And don't worry, your not the only one who might get confused by looking at all
theese dots and lines. To find out which dot is which, we need to isolate the faces we wish to work with.
Go to the right-menu and find the UVW Unwrap modifier you've chose before. Click on the small "+" and a sub-menu to the modifier will appear. This sub-menu only contains Select face, click on it and you will be able to select the face(s) in any of the windows. Choose which faces you wish to work with and go back to the Edit UVWs window. Now, to isolate the desired faces, press the small grey triangle
so it turns
red. Below you can see a big version of the UVW Unwrapping and a quick guide through each tool available. If you wish to
jump to the last steps, click here.
- When you pressed the "open" button, The Material Editor window will show you the Map on the Sphere in the top-left
corner and it will show you the parameters of your texture below. You don't need to touch any of theese parameters,
except the usual name field that is currently named something like "Map #1" or any other number. Also if you want to
change your bitmap later, you can simply change the loaded bitmap by looking just under "Bitmap parameters" and pressing
the button where the destination is written.
To get back to the main Multi-Material press the back sign
which is to the right of
the Name field inbetween the other buttons. Pressing 1 time will lead you back to the submaterial. Pressing 2 times will
lead you back to the Main material. Repeat Step 4 & 5 to load the texture in the other submaterials.
Tip! Press 1 time and press the 
on. This
will make the texture shown in the Perspective Viewport.
Tools quick guide
- When selected, you can drag your vertexes around, to make them fit somewhere on your texture. By a hold-click a small sub-menu appears, where-from you can select moving in the Y-axis
, in the X-axis
and in both (standard).
- While it's selected, you will be able to rotate your vertexes. You cannot rotate one particular vertex, tho.
- Use Scale to scale up your selection. By a hold-click you can also select between scaling in Y-
& X-axis 
. More than one vertex has to be selected.
- Used when you want vertexes mirrored horizontally (left-right). By a hold-click you can choose between 5 similar tools;
for mirroring vertically, 
for flipping vertexes vertically and
for flipping horizontally.
- Expand Selection will select all vertexes in a twice as big area as your current selection. A hold-click will make a sub-menu appear, where you can select Decrease Selection
.
- I don't find this tool necessary, but use it eventually in advanced situations. When the Falloff tool is selected and a valid number has been entered, your deselection will be movable in the X- and Y-axis (The vertexes connected to the selection will then also move, but is depending on the number given). By a hold-click you can choose between the 4 different sub-tools
that indicates how the remaining vertexes should react when the selected vertexes is moving. If you wish to stop the deselection from moving,
reset the value to 0 and press on the Falloff-tool again. You can also switch between XY & UV cordinatetypes.
- Vertexes is often connected (welded) with each other so if you wish to break the connection, press Break Selected Vertexes. That will split all faces into individual triangles as this is the polygon with the lowest amount of edges and vertexes. (Ctrl+B)
- For making life easier when welding. When it's activated (yellow), a capital W will appear next to your mouse. Move a vertex to another vertex and they will automatically weld together when dropped.
- Use this tool to Weld two vertexes which is close to each other. (Ctrl+W)
- Works like the well known Refresh button in different browsers. If the map in the Edit UVW's window isn't up-to-date, press this button.
- Keep this activated if you wish to see the texture behind the vertexes.
- Currently unknown to me, but I am pretty sure you can change the type of cordinates used here.
- Change options for the UVW Editor, such as line color, render width/height etc.
- Select the texture used if the background is activated.
- The U, V & W cordinates for the selected vertex(es).
- Press this button and the selection will be kept selected. By a hold-click you can unlock the selection again. Tip: If you wish to prevent the selection from being selected, look at freeze below.
- A nice tool to have, when handling big amounts of vertexes. This tool will hide or unhide the selected vertexes, but please notice that the hidden vertexes might be affected too if you choose to modify the rest. To avoid that, you could eventually break the connections between hidden and unhidden vertexes.
- Freeze will lock the position of the selected vertexes and make them unselectable as long as they are frozen. But by a hold-click you can easily make them all selectable again.
- Will help you filtering all other vertex-made faces with the exception of the one selected.Does only work when a face has been selected through "Select Face" in the UVW Unwrap Sub-menu.
- A usefull tool when you wish to focus on one part of your mesh by ID.
- Move the view using Pan. This tool is also temporarily active when scroll is clicked.
- Zoom in or out using this tool. Scrolling up or down is also an alternative.
- Create a selection inside the Edit UVW's Window and the Zoom tool will zoom into that place.
- Will do the necessary distortion of your view with the focus on all unhidden vertexes.
- Will round up all cordinates to pixels, so you can rotate, move and scale with less exactness.
The Last Steps
- To save or see your work, close the Edit UVW's window and press on "UVW Unwrap" in the stack of
modifiers; Gmax will show the new UVW Cordinates when deselecting Select face. You can eventually
Collapse the UVW Unwrapper with Editable Mesh, to make the new Cordinates thoose Gmax will reset to
if you do any mistakes next time you UVW Unwrap. Please note that this will overwrite the original reset
cordinates.
Reading through the quick guide hopefully gave sense enough till you can begin UV Mapping your mesh. To the left you can see my house, UVW Mapped with the use of the UVW Unwrapper. It took me about 30 minutes and with that result I must say that I could have done it quite faster using 3ds max. But as there is still much to explore, we might in the future find faster alternative ways to UVW Map.