I notice that a few months ago, William Sutton made a post saying he now uses auto decalling, with the tiles.

Having spent much time moving points around stamps, trying to eliminate stretching, I think I'd like to use auto. It seems to work better. Disadvantage is that you can't look in Photoshop at the texture. However, you can paint in Photoshop within A:M Paint, (great feature), so do I really need to be able to look at the whole texture in Photoshop?

Any comments?

I use it if I need to get a quick model done. I can't bear uv mapping/flattening. It's worse than rigging. And I'd rather pull my own teeth out before I do that.

But if you're doing model that's "the big one" I would recommend going to the trouble. You never know when you want to go into PS to edit it. Also, I've heard that tiles renders a little lower quality. Though most wouldn't see it.

Bother.

Second question. I am working with Gala, who has a heap of texture maps.

Is it better to use heaps of smaller texture maps, rather than one for colour, one for specular, one for transparency etc? By better I guess I mean easier for those people with lower end computers, as I haven't noticed any difference.

To me it seems better to map it all on one map.

I think the only important thing is the total size of the images in mb.....and that will impact the quality. It's hard to say without looking at a specific model/images.

Like Ken said - yes, the less total mb makes it easier for memory challenged computers to handle. Probably also depends on graphics card memory (for experimenting in real-time)? BUT it all depends on what you want to do, and how you want to play.

The one image map method for a model works of course. But for what you're wanting to do - I would think you would want to keep the images/maps separate for the clothes.

That is: isolate those clothing items that you will want to be able to change textures on - eg, belt, shoes, hat, skirt, blouse...make separate decal containers for them, use separate mapping types (planar, cylindrical, spherical) depending on the type of clothing - have image types within those containers for color, bump, transparency, specularity etc -

Then go get your fabric swatches, images,photos, paintings and experiment with replacing the images used for color, bump, etc s), and varying the percent applied, and repeat counts - to start creating fashion statements.

If you have only 1 map per model - either tiled or stamped - you won't be able to play very easily to experiment with different looks.

And if you leave the clothes separate - you will be able to create pose sliders - for little (and big) girls to be able to easily vary the look according to their taste.

I can't believe how you whizz these things up, Nancy - that would have taken me days. First of all surf the net for inspiration. Then go through all my art books for more inspiration. Then go to the library.....

Yes, for swapping out I would use different decals. I was more thinking of all Gala's bits, but even eye colour could be swapped in and out. Although even they could go on the same map and have different containers.

Thanks all for helping me straighten thought processes. Cylindrical. Of course. Smacks head.

I wonder if painting the tile in auto first to get a generalize area outline, then go to flatten and stretch out the mesh, render it to get a decal, then use that for the decal map and throw out the tile map. Increase detail in map or whatever you want, and repaint it.