I need some workflow help with wood grain and end grain

[John.McWaters]

I typically use a lot of wood materials in my renderings, and I like to project end-grain textures where the end grain would be exposed. I will also tend to keep models of several pieces in one editable poly that all run the same direction, for instance, all boards that run vertically will be in one editable poly.

My challenge is, however, that I need to find a way to map an end-grain texture to be on-center with each face. I will project textures onto the pieces using the Triplanar component, which is great because I can feed it the end grain textures in the Z input, and it will project them onto the correct faces, but the texture will not be centered on the faces (some faces, you'll see a seam). I'm wondering if there is a way to do this besides a UVW Unwrap.

I've included a screenshot and file that illustrates my problem.

[James Vella]

Can you just use UVW map instead and select Face?

Also crop the image for the section of the center of the wood end so you dont get overlaps

[John.McWaters]

Can you just use UVW map instead and select Face?

Also crop the image for the section of the center of the wood end so you dont get overlaps

Face is great in that it will center the texture on the faces, but it also warps them to fit the face. I wish Face would work with real world map sizing

[James Vella]

Depends how you work but usually I would do this at the end, just do a poly select all those end faces and then just uvw map (box mode), scale or use realworld with tileable wood-end and done. Its all very specific I suppose but its an option.

[John.McWaters]

Depends how you work but usually I would do this at the end, just do a poly select all those end faces and then just uvw map (box mode), scale or use realworld with tileable wood-end and done. Its all very specific I suppose but its an option.

I think I need to rework my practice in that my pieces of wood need to be individual poly's with their pivot at the center. This should cause TriPlanar to automatically alight the center of each object and therefore project the end grain texture right where I need it.

[John.McWaters]

Result after figuring out all the parameter setups

[Aram Avetisyan]

Glad to hear you managed it on your own!

For centering the "projection", you can use local space for triplanar and bring the pivots of the planks to their center.
It should work. Or maybe that is how you have already done it :)

[John.McWaters]

Glad to hear you managed it on your own!

For centering the "projection", you can use local space for triplanar and bring the pivots of the planks to their center.
It should work. Or maybe that is how you have already done it :)

Yep, that's how I did it. I had to apply an XForm reset on some pieces. When it comes to scaling and rotating textures in Triplanar, do you know if it uses the center pivot as the scaling and rotation point, or does it use the texture's 0,0 point?

[Aram Avetisyan]

Glad to hear you managed it on your own!

For centering the "projection", you can use local space for triplanar and bring the pivots of the planks to their center.
It should work. Or maybe that is how you have already done it :)

Yep, that's how I did it. I had to apply an XForm reset on some pieces. When it comes to scaling and rotating textures in Triplanar, do you know if it uses the center pivot as the scaling and rotation point, or does it use the texture's 0,0 point?

The texture is placed relative to the pivot point, so all the transformation should happen relative to it too.
Just test it out to be sure.

Sidenote: if I understand what you are trying to achieve correctly, the 3ds Max advanced wood can be just exactly what you need (in the sense of having correctly transforming grains). I would advise giving it a try and using the existing textures in combination with it. I have a feeling you will like it.

[John.McWaters]

Glad to hear you managed it on your own!

For centering the "projection", you can use local space for triplanar and bring the pivots of the planks to their center.
It should work. Or maybe that is how you have already done it :)

Yep, that's how I did it. I had to apply an XForm reset on some pieces. When it comes to scaling and rotating textures in Triplanar, do you know if it uses the center pivot as the scaling and rotation point, or does it use the texture's 0,0 point?

The texture is placed relative to the pivot point, so all the transformation should happen relative to it too.
Just test it out to be sure.

Sidenote: if I understand what you are trying to achieve correctly, the 3ds Max advanced wood can be just exactly what you need (in the sense of having correctly transforming grains). I would advise giving it a try and using the existing textures in combination with it. I have a feeling you will like it.

Thank you, I haven't played around with that. I got Arroway's Design Craft Vol. 4 for BF, and I'm trying to find the best way to work their textures into my workflow.