The Character Studio
Modeling, Texturing and Animating low-poly Lara Croft

- a tutorial for n00bies -

In this part, we'll try to create a texture-map for our Lara-Model (in fact, we have to create 3 texture maps ;) ). As there are lots of possibilities to do that, I choose the one which is the easiest to explain ;) There also exists programs like BodyPaint or DeepPaint, but I guess not everyone owns one of these programs, so I am going to use Adobes Photoshop. You can use any 2D-paint-program you chose. You can even use the paint-program which comes with windows. In the first part I wrote that this will be mainly a Photoshop-Tutorial, well thats not right, I just wanted to say that most of the work is done with a 2D-program. I have not explained every step on how to create a texture in Photoshop. I just give you the main hints and hope that you will be able to create a cool looking texture by yourself.

Alright, lets start:

1. If you have finished the first part, load your Lara-Croft-Model; BUT if not, load the model which is attached at the end of the first part. Select your model. In your modify-menu, activate the poly-mode and mark your whole model. In your modify-menu, scroll down till you find the surface properties. (3rd pic below). Now type "1" in the red-marked field and press enter.

Hint: That is necessary because we are going to use a multi-sub-map. By now, we made sure that the whole model has a material ID = 1. As we are going to create 3 materials we have to repeat the first step 3 times. Our first material will be her backside. Our second material will be her frontside. The last material will be her hair.

2. Therefor: Scroll up in your modify menu till you find the "ignore-backfacing" field (first pic below). Activate it. Now, in your front viewport mark your whole Lara-Model. If you have activated "ignore backfacing", only her frontside should be selected. (you can check that in your perspectiv-viewport). If there are some wrong polys selected press the ctrl-button and then click on the poly. It should get de-selected. Especially the polys at her bag,... It is very important that you do NOT have any polys from the backside selected. So rotate your perspective-viewport and deselect all polys which should not be selected. (Take a look at the pic below to see which polys must be selected.) Now scroll down to the surface properties type 2 in the Material ID field and press enter.

3. Last step is to de-activate the "ignore backfacing" field again. Now select all her hair and apply 3 in the Material ID field.

Hint: You should now have a model which has 3 Material IDs. You can test that by clicking on the "Select By ID". In the pop-up window type 1, 2 or 3 and press ok. Now only the ID should be marked which you had selected....If not, just read on. ;)

4. Now open your material editor (shortcut = "m"). In the first field load a multi-sub-map (Click on the button "standard", a new window should pop up. There you select Multi/Sub-Object and click ok) and apply it to the model (=the "assign material to selection"-button = 3rd below the spheres ;) ). Change the colors from the first 3 materials so that you can see the different IDs in your viewports (first pic below) . Now take your time and select the wrong polys (if there are any) and give them the right ID. (just select the poly, scroll down to the Material ID field (3rd pic - step1) and enter the right ID). At the end your model should look like the one below. (click to enlarge)

5. Very good. Now we have prepared our model so that we can create some texture maps. De-activate the poly-mode!! Add the "Unwrap UVW" modifier to the stack. (the modifier is called Unwrap UVW do not select any other UVW-modifier!!! I have to write that cause I wrote some tutorials and told to use a modifier and HOURS after the tutorial was online I got several mails that the tutorial does not work, just because they took the wrong modifier. But that does not belong to here ;) ) When done click the edit-button. You should see something like the first pic below. Zoom out till you can see the whole model. Select all the vertices and move them so that the model fits the gray rectangle perfect. (very important)

Hint: The gray rectangle represents our picture which we do not have by now ;) By placing the wireframe exactly into that rectangle we can use it as a reference in photoshop. So we know where to paint...

6. Now maximise that window (I think that I do not have to explain everything ;) ) and zoom in so that the wireframe fits your whole screen. When done, change from "all IDs" to "1" (the field in the lower menu-bar). Now you should just see the wireframe from the material ID 1. Make a screenshot ("alt" + "print"). Load your 2D-program (photoshop). In photoshop go to "file" - "new". The Format should be your screen resolution (as we loaded a screenshot from the whole screen into the RAM.) (I took 1152x840, 28,346 pixel/cm, but that depends on your screen resolution!! - most of you will take 1024x768 I guess). Click OK. You should now have a white picture. Press "ctrl" + "v". You previous taken screenshot should be loaded now. All you have to do now: is to cut out the gray rectangle. Open a new window and paste it there. (I am sure that I do not have to explain that). At the end you should get a pic like below. Redo that step with the material IDs 2 and 3. If for some reasons you do not manage to capture screenshots and load them into your 2D-program, I have added the 3 pics you need below. Just click to enlarge

7. So far so good. Save the 3 pics as a JPG (you can select high quality as we are not going to import the model into a 3D Game). Name the pics like: "back.jpg" (first pic above), "front.jpg" (second pic above), "hair.jpg" (guess what: 3rd pic above ;) )

8. Now comes the funniest part: We have to fill the 3 wired jpgs with some color. For that it is good if you have some reference-pics. Therefor I have added several links to Tomb Raider and Lara Croft galleries. Download some of the pics which show her head or her shoes or her trousers, as you can cut out what you need and put it over the wireframe. I really do not know how to explain that. If you have a basic knowledge of your 2D-program you should know how to mix 2 pics.

Hint: Befor you start to fill your pics. Add a new layer (first pic below) (that only works in photoshop, not in the standard windows-paint-program) and draw on this layer. If you do so, you can change to opacity-value lateron and still see the wireframe. That helps alot when working on the details. Second pic below shows you the 2 most important buttons when you want to copy and paste something form one pic into an other.

But enough of hints, here are the links which might be usefull:

http://www.planetlara.com/picsmenu.asp
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Ring/4358/gallery.htm
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Ring/4358/gallery2.htm
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Ring/4358/gallery3.html
http://noctalis.com/dis/laracroft/gallery_a2.shtml

and if you need more:
http://www.google.com/search?q=lara+croft+game+gallery

9. Now its up to you to create 2 nice texture maps (the hair is not that important as we can fake a texturemap with some bumb maps in 3dsmax ;), but if you want to do it perfect you can do one for the hair too.). To help you a bit, how they can look like I have added mine below. I have not added the big versions as there is no use of just copying my pics and map them on the model (probably also mine, from the first part,... I am wondering why you are reading the tutorial ;) )

10. Alright, when you think that your pics look perfect, save them as .jpgs and return to 3dsmax. Open your material-editor again (shortcut = "m"). In the first field you should still see the multi/-sub object with the 3 colors we created befor. Now select that material and scroll down to the basic parameters. Click on the button near the Material ID1 (first pic below). Now the sphere in the material editor should have the color you have applied befor. (I used some violet). Now scroll down to the maps-section and click on the diffuse-map-button (second pic below). Click it and select bitmap in the pop-up menu. Select your backside-jpg.

11. To see the pic in your viewport press the button shown in the first pic below. You viewport should now show something like the second pic below. If you have succeded, back in the material editor, click 2 times the "go to parent button" to get back to the main-material directory. (so that you can see the 3 material like in the first pic above)

12. Now repeat that with the material 2. Load your front.jpg, and click the "show map in viewport". If you have a map for the hair, repeat the steps 10 and 11 for that too. If you do not have a map for the hair, just select a nice brown instead of the blue. That's it. You have sucessfully textured our Lara. It wasn't that difficult, wasn't it? ;)

Hint: If there is a problem, for example if the texture map is not there where it should be, click the edit-button in the unwrap-uvw modifier and look if the wireframe is in the right position. 3dsmax places the texture-map exactly there where the wireframe is. Move it around and you will find out what I am talking bout ;)

13. On big problem is left: Our Lara has lots of ugly corners. Therefore add the "edit mesh"-modifier to your stack. (first pic below)

NEVER EVER CHANGE SOMETHING BELOW THE UNWRAP UVW MODIFIER !!!!!!!!!!

14. When done change to poly-mode and select all the polys from her feet. (second pic below). Scroll down till you find the smoothing groups. Change the value to 80 (That's a value you can play with, just try what looks good for you). When done press the autosmooth button which is nearby. The corners should be gone. Do that with her arms, her tits, and her face.

Thats it! There is nothing more to say. I have not added the finished project this time, as I want you to play around with all the new buttons and not just load my model. Next time we are going to create a biped model and create a small avi-clip by animating our Lara-Croft-Model.