[REQ] Blended box mapping

Zom-B · Post by **Zom-B** » Mon May 13, 2013 9:44 am

blended box mapping is like usual box mapping but blends the edges of the texture so seams get eliminated quite well.

With that technique box mapping can be quickly used on complex objects as long as the main texture isnt to special

A complex explanation with images can be shown here:
http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education ... apping.htm

I attach some examples from that link above for a quick overview:

+1 are always welcome if you'll like to see that feature in Indigo too

wlf_alex · Post by **wlf_alex** » Mon May 13, 2013 10:01 am

ENSLAVER · Post by **ENSLAVER** » Mon May 13, 2013 2:28 pm

Damn why have I never heard of this. Would've made things so much easier.. yes I hate unwrapping/etc lol

Today most apps have some kind of texture painting tool build in that would give similar results in terms of applying seamless textures. Also there's things like zbrush, 3dcoat, even photoshop extended.

My biggest bugbear is exporting a scene and trying to apply a texture in indigo to an object with no UVs and having to re-export the scene. Perhaps exporters could automatically apply UVs to objects with none.

I'm torn whether indigo needs UV mapping capabilities, even simple ones. Given that most 3d apps have very well developed UV tools it may be a waste of time for indigo devs to work on UVs.

William · Post by **William** » Mon May 13, 2013 3:02 pm

Mapping other than UV mapping would be a welcome idea.

Polinalkrimizei · Post by **Polinalkrimizei** » Mon May 13, 2013 8:03 pm

Nice find!
I want it.

Post by **OnoSendai** » Tue May 14, 2013 2:10 am

It looks like an interesting technique.

It's not really a UV mapping technique, rather it's a technique for blending together different textures each with different mappings.

it could be done with ISL quite easily I imagine

Zom-B · Post by **Zom-B** » Tue May 14, 2013 2:25 am

OnoSendai wrote:It's not really a UV mapping technique, rather it's a technique for blending together different textures each with different mappings.
it could be done with ISL quite easily I imagine

As long as it ends up with a workflow friendly integration in the Exporters I'm in

zeitmeister · Post by **zeitmeister** » Tue May 14, 2013 4:44 am

Its called Triplanar-Mapping in VRED... ^^

Mor4us · Post by **Mor4us** » Wed May 15, 2013 11:52 pm

+1
could imagine integration in host apps gets kind of difficult :/

galinette · Post by **galinette** » Mon May 20, 2013 10:21 pm

Hi,

This example shader does this with a simple diffuse material. The map is not positionned with UV maps (as this would require 3 UV sets, painful, or UVW set, not available in Indigo), but uses world position and thus maps along XYZ scene axis. You can scale the texture with the mapsize parameter, in meters. It's yet not possible to shift the texture but this would not be difficult to add. The smoothness of the blend between cube faces is tunable with the smoothness parameter.

By the way, how is it possible to set a shader texture without manual editing of the igs code?? This was possible in the past with the standalone material editor

Etienne

zeitmeister · Post by **zeitmeister** » Mon May 20, 2013 10:52 pm

Mor4us wrote:+1
could imagine integration in host apps gets kind of difficult :/

Could be a simple checkbox with a blend value in the material, which is automatically applied when cubemapping is recognized.

Zom-B · Post by **Zom-B** » Mon May 20, 2013 11:06 pm

zeitmeister wrote:
Mor4us wrote:+1
could imagine integration in host apps gets kind of difficult :/
Could be a simple checkbox with a blend value in the material, which is automatically applied when cubemapping is recognized.

That blending could be actually aplied to other UV metodes as well like plane or cylinder...

Post by **OnoSendai** » Mon May 20, 2013 11:34 pm

galinette wrote: By the way, how is it possible to set a shader texture without manual editing of the igs code?? This was possible in the past with the standalone material editor

It's not currently, this ability got lost. I'll look at adding it back.

CTZn · Post by **CTZn** » Tue May 21, 2013 8:05 am

OnoSendai wrote:
galinette wrote: By the way, how is it possible to set a shader texture without manual editing of the igs code?? This was possible in the past with the standalone material editor
It's not currently, this ability got lost. I'll look at adding it back.

Furthermore, shader textures have been returning black after the shader is edited for quite some time too.

Post by **OnoSendai** » Tue May 21, 2013 8:57 am

CTZn wrote:
OnoSendai wrote:
galinette wrote: By the way, how is it possible to set a shader texture without manual editing of the igs code?? This was possible in the past with the standalone material editor
It's not currently, this ability got lost. I'll look at adding it back.
Furthermore, shader textures have been returning black after the shader is edited for quite some time too.

Yeah, that's pretty annoying. Will fix.