I know it isn't perfection....so I am asking for help. a) how do you prevent texture stretching in Maya 6? b) I added lights, but there aren't shadows casted off the objects....how do you get the shadows in there?? c) How do you get the edges really smooth?? I know you can link me to mayalearning, but if you can post your answer in here or email me at Aaron.NMM@gmail.com .....I would appreciate it. Also, any positive or negative feedback is welcome. Thanks, guys and gals.

You have a lot of borked textures, i suggest you learn about UV mapping.

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Original post by Mantle I know it isn't perfection....so I am asking for help. a) how do you prevent texture stretching in Maya 6?

I don't use Maya so I can't help with the details, but the problem here is that you are using the wrong mapping mode for your texture coords.

You are using a planar mapping which converts two of your coords in object space (say x,y) into u,v in texture space, the third coord (z in this case) is dropped. This works fine for the faces which are aligned to that plane, however for faces at right angles to the plane either x or y is constant, which means that u or v is constant, which means that you will be stretching a single row or column of your texture over the entire surface.

The solution is to use a different mapping mode. For objects like this with straight lines and right angles a "box" mapping (may be named differently in maya) is best. This will use the plane most closely aligned to the face as opposed to a constant plane to do the mapping described above. Other options for curved surfaces are cylindrical or spherical mapping. You'll want to find the control in Maya that lets you select the texture mapping mode and experiment with the controls.

Once you get into more complex shapes you'll want to use an unwrapping technique. This allows you to assign each face in your model a section of your texture and gain more control over the result. However for simple, box like shapes such as walls an automatic texture mapping mode should work fine, you just need to pick the right one.

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b) I added lights, but there aren't shadows casted off the objects....how do you get the shadows in there??

Again since I don't know Maya I can't help much, but do you really need shadows in the editor? If this is for a 3d game, the engine will produce the shadows for you, you won't need to worry about that in Maya. If you are making prerendered stills for a 2d game then I guess you would need shadows. Take a look at your manual, I'd expect shadows to be a property of a light, something like a "cast shadows" setting. Other options would be in the material or rendering settings.

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c) How do you get the edges really smooth??

Hmm, I'm not sure which edges you are talking about. Most of the objects in your scene are very rectangular, so I would expect sharp edges on them. Are you talking about the spotlights? They do look unrealisticly sharp. The problem there is that the cones have no falloff. This results in high contrast lighting with a somewhat more dramatic feel to it. If you are going for that, you could enhance that effect some more by lowering the ambient lighting a bit, this would look decent in your first pic.

However in the office scene I think such high contrast lighting would look out of place. You'll want to adjust the falloff curve of your spot lights to smooth away the hard edges, maybe add some point or directional lighting as well, office environments tend to be well lit by overhead illumination.

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I know you can link me to mayalearning, but if you can post your answer in here or email me at Aaron.NMM@gmail.com .....I would appreciate it. Also, any positive or negative feedback is welcome. Thanks, guys and gals.

You are definetly getting better, I can see a real improvement over the last set of images you posted. Keep up the good work.

I think the main issue I see here is the textures. The first step is to get that mapping mode bug fixed. After that you need to work on creating less generic textures. What you have here may work as base textures, but you need to create more detail in the scene. Detail can come from two places: more complex geometry or more complex textures. Which is more appropriate will depend on the specific effect you are trying to achieve as well as the limitations of your engine. In the past limitations on polygon count and number/size of textures sometimes forced designs that were very bland and lacking in detail, however on modern systems we should be able to do better.

That uniform wood grain texture will make the room look like it is carved from a solid block of wood. When you add details to the scene it will help to break the base texture up and make things seem more realistic. The more visual complexity you add to the scene the more real it will look. This will also help combat the tileing effect that results from using the same texture for large continuous regions of the screen, once you fix the mapping bug I think tileing will probably be more noticeable.

Try going to a real office building and looking around. If they will let you, bring a camera along. Otherwise hit up google image search, but definetly go in person as well. What you want to do is look carefuly for little details, in the walls, floor, etc. In everyday life we tend to ignore these little details and focus on the larger gross structure of objects, but subconciously we pick up on the details. It actually isn't so important that you get the details "right", we are used to seeing things like "desk objects" that have subtle differences. So what the details are isn't that important, but if the details, the visual complexity, is missing altogether it will look fake.

When you are looking around, try to decompose the objects you look at into their component pieces. Then imagine which of those parts can be simulated as a texture or as part of the model. Photos will help you remember the details, but it's nice to look at an object in person first.

The other comment I have is regards to lighting. Whenever possiable try to put the light source in the scene as well as the light effect. You did a good job of this with the wall mounted lights in the last image.