ANSWERED: Can I UV map the same way I've UV Mapped Forever?
polycounter lvl 6
Hello I am wanting to use the new Quixel Suite and I heard of seam problems that DDO can give. Would UV mapping how I've always been UV mapping and how many have always been UV mapping be a problem? at 90* angles I make separate UV islands, such as example;
Any help would be appreciated!
Any help would be appreciated!
Replies
That said, you could pretty easily stitch the edges of your form there and combine those islands. Keeping your islands to a minimum is always good practice, even if that means a little stretching. I always keep my unwrap in mind when modelling to subconsciously guide my edge placement.
But yeah, seams in DDo, they're a problem.
-When you separate shells that share a hard edge like that, you should only offset one of the other shells slightly, then treat that pair as "one" shell.
-Don´t place shells which belong like that, at two different places on the UV map.
-Stacking of shells is generally a bad idea unless you are mirroring.
-Non-uniform texel density of the shells on the UV map will cause problems as well. Only scale down shells that are badly or not visible - or if you have a very plain material like a polished gold surface or something.
And if you don´t like MatID maps in chaos: group together the same material types.
If you do all of the above - and have good/clean AO and normal maps - working with dDo shouldn´t be a problem at all.
As you´ve already discovered, good UV maps are crucial for getting the most out of The Suite.
So what is a good Uv map then? depending on what type of model/style you´re going for you can get away with different level of ambition of the UV map. But no matter what you are doing always try to keep the textel density the same throughout you´re texture, there are various tools and plugins to help with this.
When doing organic stuff you really need to keep your uv-islands as intact as possible and place the seams where they are least likely to be seen. When doing clothes the most obvious place would be in the seams of the clothes themselves.
When doing hard surface its usually good to place seams along edges or cavities, but If you can keep your uv-island intact so that you only have one seam on a object instead of four then obviously I would put the effort in and go for that. In some cases it would simply take to long to do this, and you need to auto-generate the UV, here is an example: http://quixel.se/issue01
This mech, made bu Wiktor Öhman of Quixel, it would take quite a long time to stich all thous uv´s together, and as the wear and tear is quite heavy you know the edges will always have a bare metall texture it isn´t such a big deal. there are some place where the auto UV could use a ltittle help, but for most part it really works quite nicely!
So in closing, don´t rush your UV´s, its worth putting some effort on them, in the end it usually saves time!
Okay definitely gonna read that article! Also before I was told to make pixel density large for places that would be viewed by the player, and smaller for the areas that were not. This is what you are referring to, correct; 100% size for all of the texture uvs?
In the end it depends on what you will use your model for, If you with100% certainty know that the backside of this mesh will never be shown then of course there is no need to waste UV space on it.
Hope this helps
Hey Eric, thanks for the great response! Explanation covered everything, I will definitely keep this information in mind.