Mapping Car Decals using UnwrapUVW in 3DS MAX

[TTL3d]

This tutorial is provided to you by the king of car mapping...yours truly!

...but enough about me rambling on about pointless garbage lets get started...

(hope it helps)

Anyways start with a section of your car...I'm gonna use the front bumper off of my Grand Prix (Here)

Okay so once you have the part picked out you want to map put a turbosooth modifier on it...then add a UVW Unwrap modifier and arrange it as shown...





Then select the face option in the UVW Map rollout and go to the front viewport...select all of the faces that you are able to see from that view like so...but just remember that this is going to be mapped on so if you have edges on an anlge and you can see them from the viewprt you are in, you need to judge whether they will stretch when they are mapped on or not!





So as you can see we have all of the faces selected to map this section of the bumper...now go down to the map parameters section and you see some options for you such as...Planar, Pelt, Cylindrical, AlignX, AlignY, AlignZ, etc.

Select Planar...

Click the AlignX, etc. buttons and you will see a yellow box change axis for each option, I'm in the front viewport so I'm going to select AlignY and it will draw a yellow box around my faces...





After that scroll up and click "EDIT" in the Parameters section-I know, I know...a scary UVW Mapping screen comes up but its okay, I'm here to help!

What you should see is something like this...





Now click the vertex option at the bottom of the screen and your mesh should change like this...





Then select the move tool in the window and move it out of the blue boxed in area...





After youve done this dont close the mapping window, but go back to your object and start selecting other parts to map, like go to the side view and select everything that will be mapped on the parts you can see...





Now if you kept the other mapping window open you would've been able to see that as you selected other faces it deselected the previous ones, and started selecting new ones...thats ok! But you also would've seen that as you selected new ones it highlighted them in the Mapping viewport as well...

I just selected the bottom part of the intake holes on my bumper to give you and example...

Once you've selected what you want then go back and do the same thing we did before with the planar mapping, select the right axis that will outline your selection and click edit it should make your selected faces expand to the size of the blue box...





I know it's weird but what can you do? Now move these faces in the same way as the last group...select vertex mode, move tool, and move them out of the boxed area and above your other group of faces...

Okay lets pretend that this is all you want mapped on this body piece now what you want to do is select all of the left over pieces inside the box and move them onto the other side, so there is nothing inside the box...





Now all you have to do is take the (in my case 2) groups of faces and put them back into the box...Scale them so that they a recognizable, but also utilizing as much space as possible...





Now if you notice I have scaled down the other pieces and put them at the bottom, this is so they sre in the mapped coordinates but they wont have anything on them cause there wont be any decals down there...you'll better undersatnd later on...also I went into the "Options" > "Advanced Options" menu and turned of all of the guide options and changed the map resolution to "1024x1024" instead of "256", last but not least click the hide bitmap button at the top of the mapping screen, it should get you to the point that I am currently at.

Okay now what you want to do is take a screenshot of your mapped box like so...Making sure everything is deselected and the mesh is white on a black bg...





Now paste that into Photoshop, and crop the blue box with the dimensions of-yup you guessed it! "1024x1024"...





Now after that you need to go to the "select" scrolldown, and click "color range" click "sampled colors" and go to "highlights" select that and click "ok"...

Now your mesh should be selected, press "ctrl+shift+J" and a new layer shouls apper with the mesh cut out...Select the black layer and delete it you should now have the mesh layer and the background...





Now right click on the mesh layer and go to "blending options" go down near the bottom and select "color overlay" change the colour to red or something bright so you can see it when you're mapping white decals!

Ok now for the fun part...open your decals in photoshop and delete the background layer hopefully they're white with a black bg,or the other way round, that would make it easier!

Bring the decal layer into your map file by right clicking on the decal layer, and duplicating the layer to your map file...





So I have this decal...now what?

Now you want to place it where you want it to go on your part...





As you can see I've made the bg black, and hidden the wires...when you get to this point you want to save 2 copies of this image one wich looks like this...





and the other like this...





Now the reason the second one is all white is becuause it is going to mask out what we want to show up on the car and what we dont...it was done by just putting a white "colour overlay" on the decal layers, the same as what we did with the wireframe...

Now after you have done this go back to 3d Max and open the material editor, and make a Multi/Sub Object Material...This is what you would use to map your whole car, set the number to 2 for now (you can mess around with it more yourself!) and name the first material the body part you are mapping...

Go into there an you have 3 slots...Make the first slot your paint material, the second one you will go into and just add a bitmap to the diffuse slot...the bitmap will be the colour version of your map, and the last slot is your mask, load the b&w version of your map...

Now you wont be able to see the decals on your car unless you click interactive, for the middle material...the decals will show on your car and if you open the UVW Map editor again, "show bitmap", and load your colour map, you can select parts of your car and move them around and see how the decals on your car will move around as well...





Well I guess that about covers it!


I'll leave you with a final render of the bumper...





Peace! :deal:

[Dave_3d]

Very good. Nicely done. I've only used the UVWunwrap once or twice so that is very insightful ! Always interesting to see how others do things.

Now wait for all the stickered cars to appear

That is a sticky.

Dave

[Pafi]

Thank you so much to share this !!
This is very well done, and very helpfull..;
Once again thank you !

[EquiNOX]

:buttrock: Hail to mapping king... Thanks you so much, I will try that myself t-nite. Just one question... I don't use turbosmooth but uses mesh smooth instead. to select faces in meshsmooth, would it work same as turbo smooth?

[Dave_3d]

Yes, you work on the unsmoothed mesh for teh UVWunwrap placement.

Edit Poly has lots more control and helpful tools than Edit Mesh - you should consider using it.

Dave

[EquiNOX]

Oh yes dave, I have always used Edit Poly.. But when I want to smooth polygon I use Mesh Smooth Modifer. Or say its wrong to use mesh smooth when I select edit poly at first ? Sorry for the off topic.

[Dave_3d]

Ooops sorry - meant Turbosmooth - not Meshsmooth - does the same thing but because it doesn't have the ability to fine tweak after smoothing it is a lot lighter with less overheads.

Dave

[Absolutehype]

Really glad you posted that man, allways wanted to know hows you did that. As soon as i am by my pc ill give it a go.

[EquiNOX]

Ooops sorry - meant Turbosmooth - not Meshsmooth - does the same thing but because it doesn't have the ability to fine tweak after smoothing it is a lot lighter with less overheads.

Dave

Interesting.... Duly noted.. I will try some experiment with turbo smooth. Thanks for the info.

[jtexplik]

thanks for it, but....

My photoshop version is in french (I'm french!!) and unknowing this soft I can't change the color of the background...:banghead:

and to duplicate the layers.... I don't arrive.... does anybody have a video to explain it please??

[evo]

Nice thx for this tutorial :love: :buttrock:

[timonlp2003]

hi everybody, I'm a newbie .
great tutorial and great site I've seen, thanks:buttrock: :buttrock:
-----------------
Sorry my Eng:chinese:

[Pafi]

Hi TTL3D,
this tut is so good, it helps a lot !!
Can I ask you if it's will be possible to do another tut or just explain me what are yours settings, textures, lighting,... in max to obtain this?
Thank you a lot !

[Woody79]

theres amuch easier way than this. just use tiff files with imbeded alpha channels. then in the diffuse slot, just use a composite map (dont confuse with a composite material). Apply different map channels for each one of these, knock off tiling, then mapp on your object using the same map channels defined in your composite material. You can layer as many as you want and pull them around on your model to get them in the correct places.
easy peasy. the alphas all multiply up over the car paint.
:buttrock:

i did this for this image.


excuse the bad lighting
every decal is alpha'd tiff, and layered up.if anyones interested maybe I can do some screenies to explain it a bit better, and post a max file.

[EquiNOX]

Woody, I certainly would be interested to see how you have done it. I am not even sure I get drift about composite map in diffuse slot and stuffs. Maybe you should write brief step-by-step w/screenshots?