Thursday, November 09, 2006
the privilege of the creator
Yesterday, after weeks of stress, fighting against complicated programs like Blender and XSI, after hours and hours spent documenting on .x file format and on directx shaders I found a solution for my problem: how to convert a texture applied onto a mesh into vertex colors of the mesh itself.
I wanted a program to do this because I have to import large terrain data into the game, but I didn't want to use textures: for good results with terrain visualization they should be very detailed, and thus very large. Rather than loading a 200megs texture onto the program I prefer to use a high-poly mesh, whose vertices are colored according to a landsat texture of the same region.
The nice sensation, which probably only inventors or programmers or creators can experience, is to have found the light after a period of total obscurity, to have done something which was so simple and obvious but took so much difficulty to reach. In my case I tried very complex 3d modeling applications, posting tons of threads in all the forums of the world, and this vertex colors "thing" seemed such an advanced concept! Yesterday I found a program, Ultimate Unwrap 3d, which costs only 50$, and that can do this job with a couple of clicks.
I successfully converted a piece of elevation data into a 3d mesh with another nice program, Accutrans, and then applied and converted a texture with UU3d. Since I was rather sceptic and depressed, for million of tests already failed, I used a photo of a girl playing with a d***o.
I will always keep this .x mesh, the prize of my perverted perseverance.
I wanted a program to do this because I have to import large terrain data into the game, but I didn't want to use textures: for good results with terrain visualization they should be very detailed, and thus very large. Rather than loading a 200megs texture onto the program I prefer to use a high-poly mesh, whose vertices are colored according to a landsat texture of the same region.
The nice sensation, which probably only inventors or programmers or creators can experience, is to have found the light after a period of total obscurity, to have done something which was so simple and obvious but took so much difficulty to reach. In my case I tried very complex 3d modeling applications, posting tons of threads in all the forums of the world, and this vertex colors "thing" seemed such an advanced concept! Yesterday I found a program, Ultimate Unwrap 3d, which costs only 50$, and that can do this job with a couple of clicks.
I successfully converted a piece of elevation data into a 3d mesh with another nice program, Accutrans, and then applied and converted a texture with UU3d. Since I was rather sceptic and depressed, for million of tests already failed, I used a photo of a girl playing with a d***o.
I will always keep this .x mesh, the prize of my perverted perseverance.
# posted by Marcus @ 2:15 PM 
