Low Poly Girl -Dahlia

[Teknogames]

  This is my first time trying to make my texture nice and organized. I uv mapped it by using a projection unwrap instead of Blender's normal unwrap by using seams.
Right now the only problems I can see is that it is inconsistently pixelly, (also her left leg and arm are not actually attatched to the rest of the model)


I would like some Texture and UV mapping tips. (and for bonus points someone can tell me a handy way to reatach duplicated limbs in blender).

[TrevoriuS]

Your uv's aren't very proper, l,ots of stretching going on, hair texture doesn't wrap at the edges either.

[snader]

i have no idea how blender works, im used to max.

however i have some ideas for UVs:
- try unwrapping a grid/checkerboard first.. then play a bit with the vertices to make the
  shapes on the unwrap closer to the model shape.. having a grid allows you to check if
  your pixels are all nice, square, and even.

- i like to do a front/back automatic unwrap and edit from there, usually making something
  like this for the shirt |right|front|left|back|.. similar for the legs (except mirrored textures)
  |inside|front|outside|back|

- always make the most of your texture space, if i look at your texture.. you can move the
  hair over, the body down, and then you have room for a double-detailed face. you could
  do the same with some other bodyparts and free up some extra space for the hair or shirt
  or something.

- this is something where pixelart and 3d differ: density. pixelart always has 1 pixel per pixel.
  in 3d however you might have a model very big on screen, or have a small texture size.
  when that happens you get blow. up pixels like in your renders.
  this often leads to very blocky images and uglyness. a good way to counter this is to pay
  attention to focal points. such as the face. use a bit higher resolution for things that people
  tend to look at more (faces. displays of screens. decals.)

-it doesnt matter if things are upside down on the texture (though it might be a bit annoying
  to work on) because it all gets compiled in 1 object anyway. so if you've got to put something
  sideways its no baddie.

- shade your character. in diffuse only its essential to have good shadows in the texture. i see
  you've done this already but it can be a bit stronger, for example a drop shadow from the shirt
  on the pants, and darker shading from the jacket on the shirt.. it might also look good to make
  the lowest row pixels of the shirt transparent, to make a bit of an indent

- dont pay too much attention to traditional pixel techniques. OMGWHAT. yeah.. dithering
  becomes a warbly mess on a distance and AAing doesnt always work nicely either. for 3d its
  a good idea to overAA a bit so it still makes sense on a small scale.



a few examples

[Jakten]

very nice so far, I like how you've tried to add texture to the materials and such so that leather looks like leather and hair like hair etc. It's making some odd random pixels and noise but if you cleaned it up somewhat i think it would look great.

For Uvs I think you might be able to crunch your UVs into 2 32x32 textures. You'll probably have to cut out a bit of detail though. Like snader said, textures can be facing any direction so long as the UVs line up properly. Also in the way of stretching I've found that once you start texturing after your first UV pass youll have to fix up the UVs as you go along so as to not have stretching and also so you dont get weird half pixels and such (sometimes these are just unavoidable though)

I'm still trying to understand how to texture things in 3-dimensions as well. One way to understand the lighting easier could be to light your model and then use those shadows as reference to light your textures. Obviously because of the low polys you'll have to imagine clothing folds and such but it should give you a much better idea overall.

As for the arm and leg http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to/video/how-to-merge-points-and-edges-on-geometry-in-blender-196570/ this tutorial may help you. (I dont use blender so )

Hope this helps