Dragon Texturing          Recently I made a dragon in trueSpace5, and I had very specific ideas about how I wanted the skin to look. I wanted the details of the skin to be on very specific parts of the dragon's head. I came up with a way of doing this without any plug-ins at all. This technique can be used with any version of truespace, and any 2D paint program. In case you're curious, I used treuSpace5 and Adobe PhotoShop.  Here is the model of the dragon's head that I made before I textured it. I then  applied a Cylindrical UV map to it. you can use any UV mapping you feel is appropriate.                                                         I then made a quick texture map, just to see how the UV wraps around the dragon's head. In my example, I made each corner a different color, and marked the middle. I see that on the model that the middle dot is between the horns, and that the yellow and red corners barely show at the tip of the lips.   Now that I have a better idea of where all of the dragon's features are in relation to the image map, I can make simple markings to the texture map in PhotoShop to mark where the eyes, lips and other features are.  By keeping the same file name for the texture map, I don't  have to repaint the dragon. If you don't see the changes you made to your texture on your model, just delete the model and hit "Undo". This brings back your model with the updated texture. This step takes quite a bit of trial and error. I then filled out the basic colors of the final texture. I would switch back and forth from truespace and PhotoShop over and over to make sure that the texture map lined up to the model. At this stage I still had guide markings that I never ended up using. This is the fun part. At this point, the guess work is over. The texture map already shows the parts of the dragon. all I have to do is fill in the details.  After I had my texture map pretty much the way I wanted it, I made a Bump map based on the texture map I made.  This was relatively easy once I had the texture map. PhotoShop's layers made this part easy. I'm still not satisfied with this bump map, it's a work in progress. And there you have it, a plug-in free technique for making precise original texture and bump maps. The baby dragon and the green dragon's hand were textured with the same technique. So breathe new life into the models that you've been making, the possibilities are endless! by: Charlie Hossenlopp Tutorials Index