[Maya] What is the current best way to do UV unwrapping?

Turbopasta

What is the current best way to do UV unwrapping?

I know how to do basic unwrapping in Maya (I'm using 2017), bringing it into Photoshop, then exporting it back into Maya, but this seems suboptimal to me. I have to be missing something, right? 

My texturework is fine, but is there really no way to see how the textures are affecting the geometry in real time? Do you really have to export the whole thing, see that something got messed up, then go back and fix it again? 

If you're working with something like, say, an unwrapped human face, how the are you supposed to tell where things like shadows and small details are going to go? Is it just trial and error to see if they land in the right spot? 

Are there better ways of unwrapping UVs than using Maya? I know a little about 3DSmax and other programs but I'm clueless how UVs work in those. I've also got a hypershade texture in my Maya file so I don't know how that would transfer over. 

I haven't applied any texture to this picture, I'm just posting what I've got for my project at the moment: 



I would greatly appreciate any kind of help or suggestions, I'm sort of lost when it comes to having an efficient workflow with this. Thanks!

slosh

There are tons of ways people UV.  It's mostly personal preference.  I use headus for my initial pelting and then do the rest in maya.  I don't really understand what you mean by "how the are you supposed to tell where things like shadows and small details are going to go?"  I think you just get used to how to UV based off of experience.  Oh, and this asset you just showed us...you are wasting so much UV space...please make this more efficient lol.

Turbopasta

slosh said:

There are tons of ways people UV.  It's mostly personal preference.  I use headus for my initial pelting and then do the rest in maya.  I don't really understand what you mean by "how the are you supposed to tell where things like shadows and small details are going to go?"  I think you just get used to how to UV based off of experience.  Oh, and this asset you just showed us...you are wasting so much UV space...please make this more efficient lol.

See, since I'm new to UVing I don't really know what those tons of ways people set up UVs even are. 

I'm making this inquiry because I don't want to put hours into doing this stuff the way I've been doing it to only be told "Oh, you could have saved those hundreds of hours by plugging it into program X"

Also yeah, that UV is the result of me spending around an hour fixing things. It is very much a lousy example of what I can do, lol.  

EDIT: I fixed up my UVs a bit so it's less triggering now.  

throttlekitty

"Oh, you could have saved those hundreds of hours by plugging it into program X"

See, that's the tricky part, though it's more about technique than software here. That said, I highly recommend Nightshade UV, others say Roadkill. NSUV has some nice automation for straightening, aligning, gathering and texel density; I think those are what I use the most aside from unwrapping. Depending on the asset, I like to keep straight things straight and boxed when I can. Then I tend to use the legacy unfold, swapping between horizontal and vertical as needed in conjunction with the alignment functions.

For example, those boxy triangle things in the lower middle, assuming they needed to be the same size/shape. I'd grab all the inner vertical left UVs across all the shells, align left, then the same on the other side. Then a horizontal unwrap on all the remaining UVs, forcing them to unwrap based on what I did in the first two steps. Kind of an old and maybe slow technique, but it works well for me. (I hope all that makes sense without pics)

What would you say are the things you spent the most time doing while working on those UVs?

kwyjibo

There is a check box in maya's preferences to automatically reload updated texture files. So just have maya and photoshop open, paint away at your texture in PS, and hit command s and check maya whenever you feel like checking how the texture looks on the model. You can also use maya's 3d paint tool to paint directly onto the model. I often paint a black and white texture (just line work) in Maya to use as a reference in PS to get important line work and patterns in extactly the the correct position. This is especially handy for things like geometric patterns on non simulated cloth where the UV islands and not straight.