Texturize Extruded Helix

[Anonymous]

Hi Guys!

I made a Helix. It has 13 turns. The radius shrinks towrds up. So it looks like a tower.

Then, added Extrude modifier in Z axis.

I have a filmstrip .png. I want to texturize outer side of the extruded helix by this image.

In the end, I want to produce a filmroll-like tower which is a company logo actually.

The thing is:

I go to Meterial Editor, I choose Standart and apply bitmap from Diffuse. Whenever I click  "Show Shaded Material", it colours  the the whole model in some strange brown color, which exists -I guess- in the image. No filmstrip, no tiling, nothing else...

I am very new to 3ds so please explain in a very detail way like explaining to a dummy

Thanks a lot! 

[Anonymous]

It needs UV mapping to display the texture properly. This would be easier with a different modeling technique, the extruded spline will not have proper UV mapping. Creating a long plane (which will automatically have UV maping) and applying a path deform to wrap it to the helix may be easier. Otherwise, you would use spline mapping to map the objects.

[Anonymous]

I think, got it... Thanks! I'll try and tell the result.

[Anonymous]

Helix line bends the plane strange like a rose :S

[Anonymous]

Tweaking the Rotation and Twist may fix it. Possibly a better alternative is to apply a Sweep to te Helix. Set Section to Bar, adjust Length and Width for a film thin rectangle, turn off Banking to stop the twisting and enable Gen Mapping Coords.

[Anonymous]

I flipped it on both X ,Y, Z axis in Path Deform settings and made the other tweaks. Also i modified the plane's segmentation. But this was the most reasonable result that i had.

Anyway, i am not with my pc. I'll try your new suggestion as soon as possible and tell the result.

[Anonymous]

After trying several methods, somehow my very first method worked today strangely. Very strange... Actually the only difference I tried was checking "Generate Map Coords" box.

Anyway, now I have another problem. Max renders something very weird which has nothing to do with my current model. The texture rendering is Ok but the shape is so fun! What's your opinion? Should I open another thread for this?

[Steve_Curley · Accepted solution]

Looks like the whole model is inside-out. Try flipping all the polys.
You can check this by right-clicking the model > Object Properties > Backface Cull. You should (if that is the problem) see the same thing in the viewport.

[Anonymous]

I saw your flipping advice but hadn't read the rest. So, I coverted the model to poly, then, selected the whole model in panel mode and flipped it. Worked actually. So do you think it may couse any trouble in the future? Should I do it as you've adviced?
Anyway, thanks to everyone for every single advice.
Just for my curiosity; how did you understand that it was flipped? I didn't do anything extra in designing process. How should I avoid such situations?

[Steve_Curley]

My flipping advice is always worth reading 😉

It's very easy to tell if something is inside out - well, once you get used to it anyway - especially if you orbit around them. Create 2 Boxes. Convert 1 to Editable Poly, select all the polys and Flip them. Select both and turn on Backface Cull as suggested above. The difference is clear and quite obvious.

Not flipping them is likely to cause more problems. As to how it happened - impossible without knowing exactly, click by click, keystroke by keystroke, how you created it.

[Anonymous]

Thanks again for everything 🙂

[Stefan_L]

If your film consists of a single face, which should be okay unless you want some weird refraction,

you'll always see some backsides - film is translucent in most cases.

So make sure your material is doublesided. For Arch&Design materials uncheck "Back Face Culling" under "Advanced Rendering Options".

BTW, you can "flip" the normals of your film roll by selecting counter clockwise creation 🙂

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the tip 😉