[RESOLVED] mapping keyboard keys...Corona decal material?

[Erich]

Hello everyone. I am hoping there is someone here who can help me. I am trying to find the best way to add numbers and icons to the keys of this keyboard. I have tried to use Corona decals material but found it very difficult to line up all the characters for the keys so that they would be centered properly on their respective keys. Any suggestions on how to do this? I am using 3ds Max.

Thanks.

[Avi]

combine all keys, select the top face, apply a unwrap and do a normal mapping, give each face a seperate ID then either use Corona multimap or multi sub object to apply different textures and materials to every key.

OR

Take the unwrap to photoshop and manually paint or put numbers in 1 single texture and use that single texture in 1 materials and be done with it.

OR

you should be able to use decals also, it should not be that big of a issue. you can also use align tool to align decals to key centers.

[Erich]

combine all keys, select the top face, apply a unwrap and do a normal mapping, give each face a seperate ID then either use Corona multimap or multi sub object to apply different textures and materials to every key.


What do you mean when you say "combine all keys"?

OR

Take the unwrap to photoshop and manually paint or put numbers in 1 single texture and use that single texture in 1 materials and be done with it.


Yes, I think this would be my preferred method, but haven't figure out how to get just one map. When I use UVW unwrap, it gives me a separate map for each key.

OR

you should be able to use decals also, it should not be that big of a issue. you can also use align tool to align decals to key centers.

How can this be done? Would I need to have one decal for each key? I tried using one decal to cover all the keys, but it was impossible to get every number/letter and icon to align properly on the individual respective keys.

[Erich]

I was finally able to figure out this one. The suggestion to combine (aka: attach) all the keys was the big help I needed. As well, when creating the Normal map, I had to turn on Top/Bottom Mapping. That gave me the map of the entire keyboard which I could then bring into photoshop to paint the keys as I needed. Thanks to Avi for the assistance. :)