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Books & Book Sleeves
Hey, So, I've been having a little trouble with putting new Book Sleeves on Books and getting everything to align. I can get the image on there through 'Modify', and adjust using the controls, but it's always running over or under in one direction or another. I've tried adjusting the size of the book itself, but the picture just adjusts with it. What am I doing wrong? Also, if I wanted to scan in an image for a book, I need the cover and spine of course, but do I need the back cover or will SH3D stretch the background colors to cover it? Do I need to measure the real world book 1st and then adjust the virtual book to match it in size?
Netherlands
Joined: Apr 8, 2022
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Re: Books & Book Sleeves
I mentioned it in another post for someone else: correct texturing is one of the most difficult things in 3D modelling. Fortunately a book is a box type model. A box has 6 sides and from what I understand from your question you want to texture all sides to represent a real book. The easiest way is to create images with the same scale as each side of the box. Applying such an image to a side should perfectly fit and align with the surface of that side. Since the bottom and the top are the same with only page edges you only need one image you can use on both but still create it with same scale as the side it is put on. You can maybe use it also for the long side because stretching page edges will hardly distort the image. How big the box is doesn't matter as long as the images have the same scale as the side it is applied to.
That said, creating individual books is nice but you will get pretty large models because of the multiple images. If you intend to place multiple books on a shelf you are much better of with creating an image of a row of books where the space above the shorter books is transparent. Then you can apply that image to a box with the front the size of the image. once place on a shelf you will hardly notice the missing tops of the books.
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Joined: Nov 3, 2024
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Re: Books & Book Sleeves
I've been working with creating books, or saving altered versions of them, and I have another related question.
When I create a new book cover and spine, then import it (I've been importing them as textures), then assign them to the books and re-export/import the book under this new cover, can I delete the previously saved texture in the texture menu or does the program always need that file to draw on each time I create choose that book from the library?
My texture library is rapidly accumulating odd image files that I'd love to clear out, provided it doesn't undo my work.
Netherlands
Joined: Apr 8, 2022
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Re: Books & Book Sleeves
When you add a model to a Furniture Library (.sh3f file), the obj, mtl, and texture files are copied into the library. You can then delete all of the original files if you wish. What I do is zip the obj and mtl files along with the used textures for that model. I move the zip in a subdirectory "zip". If I create a Furniture Library I use the zipped files to add them to the library. Not all zipped models are added to a Furniture Library so keeping the model zips is necessary. In most cases I remove the original files once I have the model zip file secured and checked in the zip directory. The Furniture Library is just a second container that holds a copy of the zips.
This works great for simple models. When you create more complex models they will most likely consist of multiple parts, with each part being a separate obj and mtl file with its textures. Zip the end result like before and move it to a "zip" directory. Zip all the files that are part of the model including the end result files. Then you can delete the individual files leaving only a single zip with the development files as a backup. That cleans up pretty good and is much easier to backup to other storage.
Usually I don't have many sub files for parts. This is because with experience you can use a filename "tmp" for each part while developing the model, overwriting the previous part. All the parts should still be in your Sweet Home 3D project anyway so you could export them again anyway.
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