Making It Work

Part 2

by Catherine3678a

July 2012 Continuing from Part 1 ... we have imported a Skeleton .obj file. It requires grouping and the uvmap. There are several ways to do these tasks ... these are but some pointers and ideas. Everybody has to find their own best way of doing them. Some functions work better on different computers. Some won't work at all. The hardware and factor in; as well as the experience of the person sitting at the keyboard. At any rate: here are some more tips, pointers and cautions. Hopefully everybody will find something of interest at their skill level. I do not aim for writing at the professional level for professionals. AFAIK, most serious professionals use another program such as or Zbrush ;-) So "on with the show" ...

The half sphere turns blue when some faces are hidden on that group.

Sometimes to access the necessary faces for grouping one has to do something about the faces hiding them. One method is to temporarily assign the offending faces to a Shading Domain. They can then be hidden by clicking on the 1/2 circle. When 'blue' it indicates that that all faces are showing. When not blue it indicates that all faces for that shading domain ONLY on that group are not showing.

And again, remember to save, incre save and sometimes 'save as' in a nested folder. File sizes can get surprizingly huge so delete the unneeded ones afterwards.

In Hexagon it can be all too easy to mistakenly grab the incorrect line or dot to weld to. If/when that happens, normally Hexagon will crash or freeze and you must then crash it yourself using the Ctl + Alt + Delete to bring up the Task Manager in Windows. W7 is very good about closing misbehaving programs.

Notice the empty circles for the affected vertebrae's Shading Domains.

Grouping does not change the uvmap ... welding, adding/removing faces/lines/dots does. Sometimes one can get away with welding a line or two but be prepared to go back to last Save if it doesn't and you don't want to redo that work. It's more practical to finish absolutely all "modeling" before applying and unfolding 'the final uvmap'. AFTER the final uvmap is applied, then it's a good time to apply Shading Domain being careful to have each with its own name and its own material assignment ... and said material assignment must be different from all others. This is a quirk for using Hexagon over to according to some who use other modeling programs. IF in Hexagon one applies 'the same' material to multiple surfaces one will find in Daz Studio that the multiple shading domains become "one" and so much for all that hard work! It is also appreciated if the zones and materials are given suitable names for easy identification.

Shading domains existing before uvmaps are applied always create a mess.

The CheckerT is a page of square checkers. What is done to these squares is what will be done to your beautiful texture images later on. Hence the desire to have them appearing as regular squares also on the .obj groups ;-)

For those who are just starting out with modeling at all ... don't be discouraged by the apparent amount of work involved. Nearer the end of this tutorial I show a very fast method to apply a very basic uvmap to the entire skeleton. Yes it'll have overlapping faces BUT remember, this is just a skeleton to hang in a closet ;-) . What overlapping faces "means" for texturing purposes is that for e.g. what one paints on the 'arm' might also show up on 'the leg' ... as the skeleton's texture is more likely to be a colour with some effects for cracks and such ... "big deal".

As one gains experience and the entire task becomes less daunting, better uvmaps can be created using Hexagon. I do feel I should mention that not everybody has the patience for this program's uvmapping methods and very many people use a free utility called "uvmapper". Now when I first purchased Hexagon [on sale] and I read some instructions for "how to uvmap in Hexagon" and those instructions were to "use uvmapper" ... !!!????!!!! That might be how to make a uvmap; but that wasn't instructions on how to do it with Hexagon. Too many answers to too many questions involving certain programs tend to be to "use another program". All in all, that's not very helpful.

So kindly bear with me while I muddled through this tutorial because while I have figured out how to do a lot of things with Hexagon; to then present it all in a simply teaching manual is quite another task!

Actually if you want to see how it distorts the mesh, certainly you can grab a dot on the real mesh and move it over ... then click the Edit > undo to make it right again. To fix the uvmap one always works from in the uvmap's window. Possible excepts can be when discovering an unwelded line on the mesh ;-)

If/when you find some inadvertently selected lines; select them again but then hit the minus key instead of the plus key that is located beside the head/face on the unfold tab.

Hexagon likes things to be 'validated' be it by the validation key and/or by hitting Enter on the keyboard. Not doing so and being in the middle of a task and trying for a save can have some disastrous consequences. Be especially careful if you have temporarily applied a smoothing level to remove that first too.

And everything not on the Checker T will also not hold a texture pattern. Remember textures are also used for bump and displacement maps ;-)

If you don't understand this concept of 'flattening' I would recommend getting a tangible paper sphere and a pair of scissors. Cut the sphere in half. Take the 1/2 dome and make some seam cuts until it can be laid flat on the table. That's what we're trying to do with these uvmaps. The front piece I intentionally didn't make seams to flatten it because I want to show you a different method to achieve similar results. Ultimately which way one does things will rely on what works best for the particular situation. I tend to snag 'simple' objects like humongous space ships and there's no way one can unfold them with three seams!

First, one the mesh side select some faces just to see where they are located on the uvmap. Okay ... SAVE THE PROJECT.

While this method is very handy; Hexagon doesn't always appreciate our work efforts.

Those little 'dopity dodahs' are signs of trouble.

Select face group from the MESH side ... on UVMAP side click the "Dissociate" button and drag 'em over.

If/when the item being moved pulls lines STOP; edit > undo and hope it does!

Don't assign Shading domains until item is as perfectly arranged as it's going to be. Once assigned, the CheckerT 'poofs' ... think that's called a 'bug'.

I often check this type out ... if it'll work, great!

This skull actually needs to have more groups created from it in order for any of the fast methods to work correctly. And I may do that for myself later on. However for the purposes of this tutorial, I think you get the idea.

Remember ... you know ... SAVE!!! Nobody wants to redo uvmapping any more than necessary!

The materials 'vanish' when the name is validated ... but nothing is really lost so don't panic ;-) They will reappear.

If anybody is interested, no I do not like uvmapping.

Notice the missing checkers on the CheckerT.

Take it easy, have fun ... see what you can do ... see which results you like best ...

Tip: If/when at some point Hexagon starts going real slow or somehow acting up ... it 'feels' wrong ... close the program and reopen it. It does have memory limitations ... it is 32 bit ... it does require having the memory cleared by closing from time to time. And you have that saved file to start with again, right?!

Long names will cause display issues in some of the staging programs; so kindly refrain from using long names.

The main engineering room's ceiling is akin to a huge dome of space over the area. There are level ramps and 'normal' flights of stairs from the ramps to the floor. Nobody experiences claustrophobia there.

Claustrophobia will be the least of your concerns if you start/continue redistributing other people's object files. Think. How would you feel after you've done hours or weeks or months of work on a model ... only to see it being redistributed all over the place ... esp. if you were hoping it would put food on your children's plates. Laws or no laws; please be kind and respect your fellows' inherent rights.

And won't that be fun.

There's a special word for a mountain high pile of human bones.

The global site for "most battles fought on Earth" is the Valley of Josaphat. If one started the pile in this valley and the bone mountain reached higher than the surrounding mountains ... there's a very special word for this. Does anybody know the word? I've only heard it once and have no idea how it's spelt. If one made it all to scale ... how many of these skeletons would it take to make that mountain? Whose computer could handle the render? Not mine. That's a LOT of bones!

The "CheckerT".

This is a term I use for this display of black and white checkers.

The quasi legal stuff

Well, with the change of laws regarding digital stuff ... well, let's keep to the spirit of intent of the digital stuff creators so they'll keep making stuff for us to buy, okay. Resellers don't make stuff.

1. This is a FREE tutorial

2. Do NOT redistribute it.

3. Why is because if/when I wish to update it I can't retrieve it from all over the internet which has billions of websites I simply don't have the time nor inclination to seek out.

3. Do NEVER sell it.

4. Why is because the nice people who created this software for creating all this tutorial have a huge legal page which nobody can fully understand but they probably have more money than you do so like, just don't.

5. The actual information contained herein is 'mine' and that you may share as you please.

6. Why is because the more people know about making it work; the more workable items the freeware market may also see.

7. God loves you.