HOW? Texture for Indy's whip?

[Nate Owens]

I watched my Uncle braid leather for a whip (like "Indiana Jones" has) when I was a boy.

The end (cracker end) is very narrrow strips of leather that get gradually wider until the end where the handle is.

How would you create art that could accurately be used as a texture map to depict the braiding for the whip... not interested in actually trying to model the braids, just mapping art to the length of a whip (some are 6' long) to represent the tapering intertwine of a whip.

[bwtr]

I made whips like that back in my youth--kangaroo skin leather naturally.

OH BOY!--is that hard to get a 3D app to emulate!

If anyone comes up with a solution, PLEASE, PM me first!

[Nate Owens]

Curious...
I asked the question, why not let everyone get the answer here in the forum, rather than you getting your private answer (first?) ? What's the rush and the privacy?

[-ash-]

Sorry, Nate. I think this is way beyond my capabilities.

[rickei]

have you looked at Eric's little tut

http://forums.polyloop.net/carrara-t...tml#post113925

it may give you come clues, on how to go about doing it.


as for the taper, I would texture it BEFORE, I added the taper, that way the texture map will become smaller with the taper.

[Grendel]

I would model the wip as a straight cylinder in Hex then unwrap using a cylinder projection to keep the uv process simple. Then make a spiral line and use the bend along tool to 'whip' it into shape

The texture is a simple repetition and since I suck at photoshop I would model about two inches of the braid using cubes and then render it out with an isometric camera. Then take it into photoshop and make it tiling with imagesynth or something. Then apply it along the uv map in different channels for bump, color blending and such.

[rickei]

here is a braided texture/displacement map. it's actually a basket weave, but it should be a good start

BTW I have a bull whip, hanging on the wall right beside me if you need any reference photos or scans.

[Nate Owens]

Thanks everyone.
Rickei... I downloaded your weave image, saved the tut and this whole thread to my drive so I can refer to this great advice. It is a real puzzler as btw said... hope I didn't step on his toes... apologies if so.

Polyloop remains the place to get the goods, and pretty dang quick too!

[bwtr]

Nate--I don't have any toes left! (Another joke fell flat?)

That tute is helpfull to an extent but runs into limitations when trying to really reproduce say a whip like Nates.
I am trying to get a result for the ropes on boats---but file sizes, for a start, are far to large.

[jones2000u]

Don't know if this helps - it's not an accurate answer, Nate.

I had to do a filmstrip all curled around and I couldn't work out how to do an irregular wiggle and keep a regular artwork (the film frames) in sync, so I "split" the polygon strip into bite-sized chunks in UVs and faked the
photoshop work to fit.

What I'm thinking is that is if you made a texture to fit a short length of whip at the fat end, you could UV the next section with a slightly reduced scale plait pattern, maybe with a built-in trompe-l'oiel taper in the artwork and so forth, reducing each time until you hit the business end. I'll bet a man of your drawing caliber could fiddle the textures so nobody would notice the joins!

[are]

here is a quick try - just used the image from above as a displacement map. Stretched the uv so the thin end of the whip covers more of the image (and therefore makes them smaller in the render) while the handle end of the models uvs are smaller which causes the image to be stretched more (making them bigger). Stretched too much - but maybe a pointer for you to try ?

[are]

still needs a lot of work but by rotating the image for the uv 45degs it gives a more whip like material ?

[bwtr]

are.
That latest one is as good as it gets I guess. Any better results, and full tutes, very welcome!

WELL DONE!
Brian

[Nate Owens]

Thanks, everyone... these ideas and images look really great.

The project took on a bit of a different track and turned into a painted illustration - mainly to capture the "atmosphere."

I know this is a 2D image, but I post it here as it is pertinent to this thread, which I started. Any moderators in disagreement can trash the thread if they are so inclined.



I appreciate all the assistance.
This would be a good challenge for the 3D gurus.. it is a tough one.

[jones2000u]

Would like to see the pic, Nate - the link isn't working?

Here's my attempt. This is simply a circle extruded on a wiggle and shrunk at the end. The pattern is assigned as a multichannel colour jpg and bump to the first 8 segments of the whip. The rest is just repeated, because as it takes time to assign loads of shading domains, I didn't bother ;)

This is where a displacement by shading domain would be really useful in C6. I bet Eric Winemiller's got something on his workshop shelf that would fit the bill...

Forgot to say - the nibbles in the pattern are down to shoddy artwork.

[Nate Owens]

Jones..

Very nice. Not sure why the pic isn't showing - I see it big, loud and clear.
If you click on the little "23" in the "My photos" under my avatar, scroll to page 2 bottom it is there here's the link to that part = http://forums.polyloop.net/vbimghost...images&id=1169

[jones2000u]

Duh...

Nice image, Nate!

[jones2000u]

Thought I'd pull my finger out and explain a bit better, because it's a nice texture conumdrum. It's just like that rope tut, but to get control of the diamonds down the length, the whip section was split into segments and the shaders adjusted bit by bit. It looks as though there are loads of different weave patterns you could use (looking on the web), but it's easy enough to make a repeat tile in Illustrator that can be squashed to change the basic diamond shape.

I think I've made it too fat, not long enough and there's a stupid clash at the short end. I bet if I messed with an elevation shader I might be able to get the effect of the cut edges of the leather an all...