Hi, I'm using the "horizontal line" texture included with keyshot to achieve a flexible duct look, it works well for straight sections of ducting but doesn't seem to align itself when there are curved sections... any thoughts or suggestions on how to get this work are appreciated.
You'll need UV coordinates to map the 2D texture along the geometry. It depends to the modelling tool providing UV's.
Just like this topic: https://www.keyshot.com/forum/index.php?topic=19889.0;topicseen
Hope that helps to find a solution.
Thanks so much, yeah so looks like NURBS based algorithms don't support this, ie can't UV map with CAD files.. :( bummer, I guess I'll just use a plain aluminum material. I don't know blender well enough to convert to mesh/UV unwrap etc. My question would be, if I could convert this file to a mesh, did the UV assignment stuff, would I be able to import it into my CAD scene in keyshot?? Might be difficult to place it perfectly though... really hate the "move" control in KS..lol..
ahm - I'm not really sure if understand your question - yes - you can mix your scene with CAD files and modified files from other tools that provides meshes with UV coordinates.
Did you find the different mapping options in KeyShot 7? Like tri-planar-mapping, that might help a bit?!
And what is your problem with the move tool?
If it's the core focus of your rendering, then I'd highly recommend modeling the flexible rib structures in your CAD modeling package. Otherwise, if it's a smaller support element, maybe you could split this object into 3 different pieces, horizontal tube, elbow, and then vertical tube. You can then texture map each object separately. However, for the elbow, you'll need to modify your bump map, and pinch it narrower at one end (think paper folded fan)and then use a planar projection to apply the map. Hope this makes sense. Here's a still life scene I created with ProE/Creo. I found I had to model most of the overtly textured features, like the corrugated straw, bottle cap, and bottle "segments" in order to really get them to read well in the rendering.