Importance of Uving?

BucketOfNuggets

Hey everyone what is crackin?

Another noob question.

My goal is pretty much to land a job in environment modeling. I want to create epic scenery for games and set pieces. Anywho. I am working on two project at the moment and in both cases the texture artists have been happy to do the uving.

I can uv, I am not brilliant at it though and I was wondering whose job it is to UV and since I don't really enjoy texturing should I just focus on building and getting better, or in studios is it required to have the builders also uv?

peanut™

Im not even sure if you can apply for a position in a game studio nowadays if you don't show color work. If you don't UV and don't like texturing, your not really helpful in most cases.

Texturing, normal mapping, UVing are more important than modeling skills in today's world.

gutty333

I agree, I believe that pipeline in which you just focus on the modeling than have someone else texture only applies for film projects or maybe a really big game studio, I could be wrong though. Maybe someone more experience can lay some more juice on the topic.:\

Bek

I imagine it'd depend on the studio who does what task, but I highly doubt you'd want to ignore UV work. After all you're going to want to build up a portfolio to eventually get a job, so you'll want to demonstrate that you can do prop work from beginning to end. After all, what environments have no props? UV'ing is a fairly basic skill and you'd be disadvantaging yourself by ignoring it.

Generally it's easier for whomever is doing the texturing to do the UV's, but in the case of High/low and baking normal maps, the UV's affect that too, so you'd have to take that into consideration. UV's seem quite crappy when you first start, but with a bit of practice and understanding they become a lot easier.

passerby

expecailly with next gen work flows where lot of the data used in texturing is coming from your map bakes you really are expected to be able to UV bake and texture your own work, also being able to work with shaders is a big up side as well.

you should just take the time to learn, UV's are just one of those things that seem daunting for people new to 3d, but one way it will just click with you and will never be a problem again.

BucketOfNuggets

Thanks for the advice guys. Guess Ill get stuck into doing more complete stuff on my own

sargentcrunch

n/a

WarrenM

My experience is that the artist creating the model is the one who UVs it. Typically, that artist will understand the asset best and knows what can be mirrored and what is and isn't important.

easterislandnick

I UV as I go along, it means its not a massive chore at the end.

WarrenM

I might be weird but I actually enjoy UVing and don't see it as a chore at all. It's one of the steps you take to get the best looking asset possible and so it's as important as anything else.

repete

WarrenM wrote: »

I might be weird but I actually enjoy UVing and don't see it as a chore at all. It's one of the steps you take to get the best looking asset possible and so it's as important as anything else.

+1

It's really satisfying when a model has proper uv's and textured well. Uving is part of the process and it used to annoy the hell out of me but I do enjoy uving these days

anthonydavis33

The reason it seems annoying right now or tedious is because you most likely aren't comfortable with the tools available on whatever package you are working with. After you get a workflow for the standard concepts of geometry, you will start to enjoy it. I remember trying to UV a tree with cylinder mapping and I was pretty much ready to destroy the entire planet. Now I have my own workflow which can be tedious, however I know how to do it so its almost like a meditation at this point.

If I can attest it to anything its almost like rendering in traditional art. When you are setting out your shading it generally gets to a meditative state and requires low brain power, you just do what you need to. Add the bounce light, push the values.. and so on.

The point being is make a few small models and get to UV'ing them, get a workflow for a hard surface, then organics, then.. whatever else you want. You will find your self getting faster and less annoyed over time.

Ace-Angel

Generally. you cannot bake, project, displace, etc, without UV maps, so it's kinda silly to even ask what is essentially the basic need of a model.

You might be able to get away with no UV's in a Movie studio, where shaders are doing all the fancy work, but it's adds severely to render time, especially on pieces that move but the texture itself shouldn't be 'floating' or 'moving' in space over the mesh.

So yeah, no dice, you need to learn to UV. At the very least create the basic unwraps and stitching on your model, so when your friends get it, they will only to clean it up a little here and there.

In your case however, just look how they unwrap the model and what they generally do, and try to imitate that to save them time.

Naturally, this depends if your TA's workload is big or not. I mean are they CGTexturing pasting a couple of textures and calling it a day via CrazyBump? Are they writing the shaders? Vertex painting? Are they more of Tech Artists? Etc.

For all we know, you could be doing every single environmental model piece, and it would be pipeline-wise, unwise (pun intended) to UV something when the other peeps have the open time to spare, hence slowing down the team.

peanut™

+1

I agree with all of the above, and on top of that who's going to want to UV your assets in a production workflow ? none.

Mark Dygert

Unfortunately this is one of those areas where technical skill and knowledge are a must.