Texture Mapping
(Tip 1 - Edges)

There is a problem in MTM2 where an ugly line that is the same color as the sky will appear on the edge of a face.

Two examples are the barn in Farm Road 29 and the shack in Scrapyard Run. Let's have a closer look at one of them.

Barn - normal view

Barn - closer

Barn - really close

Theory 1

One account for this is that the edge of a texture is used on the face of a bin. The advice follows to never use the edge of a texture on your bin faces; always map inside the texture; never just assign a texture to a face without mapping.

This means that when you map a face, make sure that there is a space between the face outline and the texture edge in the Face Group Texture Box. For example, like this:


Now, while this texture theory could be correct there is another equally plausible explanation for this problem. Namely ...


Theory 2

This idea claims that the vertex points for the faces that form the seam are not in alignment. A close look at the barn shows a sloppy 14 unit gap on the z-asis between one face and the other.

The advice here, then, would be to use the same vertex point, whenever possible, for each of the faces. And, when doubling up on vertex points is not possible, make sure they are in the exact same coordinate locations.



Whether either or the other of these theories is correct makes no difference to me. The problem is real. My advice is to take precaution on both counts. When creating textures and mapping them, leave room along the edge to guard against this problem. And, when creating vertex points and defining faces, take care of their arrangement and alignment.









- theory one originated by Bin Masta.