Been tied up with a bunch of other stuff recently, so not a whole lot of progress. I rebuilt the entire lower hull to remedy some issues. Those are all fixed, but in the process I lost some finer details, such as edge chamfers and weld beads and the like. Gonna have to recreate that stuff. Also, a few components have been added, updated, improved, etc. even since these renders, so this picture is not the final word by a long way.
Still to add are the exhaust vents; the commander’s cupola; the commander’s .50 cal low-profile CROWS and base; the main gun’s thermal sleeve details; head- and tail-lights; tons of other relatively minor things, such as radio antennae. Oh, and the tracks…
Question: is there a not-Ph.D. level way of adding text (such as signage) to these models? I’ve tried a few times but no matter what I can’t make it work. Suggestions gratefully accepted!
What have you tried? For flat text (not embossed or extruded) a 2D image containing the desired text can be used as a texture and painted onto the face(s) desired. Use PNG format to support transparency in areas where you want the underlying face’s material to be visible (between letters in the signage, say). I have had limited experience doing this myself (I mostly use plain solid colors) but there are other members in this forum community that are expert in applying textures.
What have you tried? For flat text (not embossed or extruded) a 2D image containing the desired text can be used as a texture and painted onto the face(s) desired. Use PNG format to support transparency in areas where you want the underlying face’s material to be visible (between letters in the signage, say).
Yep, I tried that too, but for some reason the .png would always obscure the underlying color. I create transparencies in Photoshop quite often and rarely have difficulties with that, but for whatever reason nothing I tried worked with SU.
Thanks for the suggestions; I will try the .png route again.
Thanks for the reminder. I forget about drag and drop. I tried that and Import from the menu and both worked. Confirmed that trying to copy the image from one surface to the other doesn’t work but copying the whole face with the image does.
It does. And may be enough for one file/model. The face and its image are one.
The overall downside is not being able to simply copy the glued image to another face.
You can however wrap your favorite [image+shrinked face] into a component. To build a collection.
The component can then be placed on any face later and exploded so the (shrinked) face merges with the larger face. Delete the little face’s edges and you have a different way of copying
(I once again interrupted the renders after only a few passes as I needed the laptop for other stuff, so please don’t blame V-Ray for the noisy images.)
Note that an image placed (glued) like this on a face can still be moved in the same plane (on or next to the face), rotated in plane and can also be scaled.
Next question: This drag-and-drop method allowed me to apply the .png to the surface and it looks great. However, when trying to render it in V-Ray all I see is the bare surface and the faint outline of the image bearing the text. Have I missed a step or five?
Sorry, someone else has to walk you through the right process. However, I’m not even sure if this is possible at all with images. I don’t do any renders (yet?) outside SketchUp’s native options.
You may still have to isolate the shape (as traced texture) on the larger face.
I think @TIG made an extention to trace the outline of shapes to then be used on faces.
I have to round the edges of the faces of the end connectors, but Follow Me doesn’t like the path. It seems to choke on the big arcs for some reason. Maybe too few segments? I dunno. But the sharp edges will remain until I crack that.
