Introduction
This tutorial shows how you would use ChilliSkinner to skin a very basic object. No advanced techniques will be used, just ChilliSkinner set to it's default settings to get you familiar with what each function does and in which order they are usually used. Typically your object will be more complicated than this one of course but this tutorial will give you a good grounding, subsequent tutorials will show more complex models and methods.
So the model we are going to skin is something close to my heart right now... the Coolermaster ATCS Aluminium PC case. Boy I'd love one of these suckers but they cost way too much for me I'm afraid :( Anyhow it ought to make a good example for this tutorial. On with the tutorial then...
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Step 1
First thing to do is create our model. This is just a standard MAX 'box' object, sized to the appropriate proportions. No modifiers or 'convert to editable mesh' applied.
Now run ChilliSkinner. Note that in this tutorial, when you see a picture of a ChilliSkinner button it means you should click it :) |
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Step 2
Clicking 'Auto Detach' with the box selected and a 'Detach Angle' of 30 will split your box into 6 polys.
Click 'Clone' to make a copy of your object for later use.
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Step 3
Clicking 'Unfold Polys' will lay each of the 6 polys down flat all on top of each other. We could use 'Flatten Polys' here instead as we aren't really doing any unfolding on these particular polys so 'Flatten Polys' would work exactly the same. |
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Step 4
Click 'Optimise Polys' to automatically rotate the selected polys to their'optimum' rotation. This will generally align them to MAX gridlines. |
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Step 5
As the polys are all stacked on top of each other we need to spread them out. Leave the shape selection as 'Square' and click 'Arrange Polys'. ChilliSkinner arranges the polys in the shape of a square with no overlaps. |
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Step 6
We still have 6 individual polys here so we click 'Attach Polys' to join them all together as one poly. |
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Step 7
Now we have the perfect poly to apply UV coords to. Click 'Apply Planar Map' to do this.
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Step 8
For the moment we are finished with our 2d flat polys, we now need to do a little work on the clone that we made earlier. Click 'Toggle Visible' to hide the flat polys and show the 3D clone polys. |
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Step 9
Click 'Select All'.
We now need to attach the 6 clone polys together as we did with the 6 flat polys, so click 'Attach Polys' again. |
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Step 10
OK now we will work on both objects together. Click 'Un-Hide All' and you should see the 3D Clone object and the 2D flat object.
Click 'Pick Source' and then select the flat 2D object in a MAX viewport. Note the ChilliSkinner button text displays the name of the object chosen.
Click 'Pick Target' and then select the 3D object in the MAX viewport. Note the ChilliSkinner button text displays the name of the object chosen, in this case it should be prefixed by 'Clone'.
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Step 11
Click 'Morph' and the flat 2D object will be made 3D again using the 3D object as a template so to speak.
Even though it looks like we have our original 3D box back, we still need to weld the vertices at each corner to make it a contiguous mesh again. Click 'Weld All' to do this.
You're done with ChilliSkinner! |
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Step 12
Use Texporter or an equivalent to generate the initial bitmap skin. Save the bitmap.
Note that Texporter is generating this bitmap based on the UV coords that ChilliSkinner placed on your object.
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Step 13
In MAX's Material Editor, select a new material and at the bottom under it's 'Maps' rollout, check the 'Diffuse' checkbox and click the 'Map' button on the right of it Choose 'Bitmap' as the map type and browse and select the bitmap you just saved from the previous step. Now drag and drop the new material on top of your object.
Note which part of the bitmap goes onto which face of the model.
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Step 14
Now you can paint your bitmap in Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro or your favourite paint package to get it exactly as you want it. I just grabbed a couple of pictures of this PC case from the web, resized them and pasted them into the bitmap. |
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Step 15
And that's it! The box becomes the ultimate PC case! :)
This process took less than ten minutes and that includes finding the case bitmaps on the web! w00p! not bad eh?!
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| If you spot a mistake on this page or think something requires better explanation please email. |
