Pelt Mapping question

disanski

Heyy everybody. Pretty much done with my low poly and I have started with the fun part - The uv's . I am having a little problem with the pelt mapping in 3ds max. I am attaching a image with it .
After I set up my seams -Point to point seam- I select all the faces from the part I would like to pelt and I hit pelt and it only pulls out from the eye and ignores all the rest of the seams that I have made. It works fine for other parts of the model but i would like to understand what causes that.
Thanks in advance.

disanski

Thanks luke.
Yeaa I could do it that way just getting this few times (on my previous character as well) so just trying to understand why is it happening.
Thanks a lot

Mark Dygert

Thats really weird, are the verts frozen?

disanski

Hey Vig. They are not frozen. I don't really know how to freeze verts. Perhaps i could have done something by mistake.. , but I don't think so. I had the very same problem for my previous character but it was with the arm .... ... weird. It is probably not a bug deal considering I have access to headus uv layout but I would like to find the solution so I can do all the work in max in future.
Thanks

Mark Dygert

You can use the right click quad menu to freeze/unfreeze vert/edges/faces.

I know pelt refuses to work if there is a gap in the pelt seam(s). I think ever open edge needs to be surounded by pelt seams? Did you do point to point seams around the open edges, like the eyes?

When I pelt I normally skip the point to point seams and just select the edges and break them. Then I select chunk with "select element" checked on and pelt that.

Personally I think you could probably relax what you have and get something better than pelting it. Might want to remove the ears, if they cause problems when relaxing and stitch them back on after you relax them individually. Or just soft select only the ears and relax them by them selves. It seems to solve better when its not having a lot of different stuff to take into account.

disanski

Thanks Vig. I did not know I have to make a pelt seam for the open edges and I did not do it for the eyes and the mouth. I will definitely try that. Thanks for the advise about the relaxing as well. Not sure if I understand it all . Map it in a different way and then use the relax function in the uv editor? Unfortunately I cant try it right now because I am working on something else that I have to finish tonight but will try that first thing tomorrow morning.
Thanks again
Edit : and yes breaking the edges so there is a seam naturally is another great idea

renderhjs

just select the edges the regular way (no seam marking) break them using Ctrl+B and then relax the whole shell selection. Its almost the same as pelt mapping, all what pelt mapping does extra is pulling out the outer edges in a ring and then relax it.

benjyshwa

Hey, my first post here been searching the net as I've come across this exact same problem. No idea why max decides it will pelt from the eye it's never happened to me before, would really like to get to the bottom of it.

Nothing is frozen, all verts are welded, no overlapping faces...

disanski

Thanks everybody for the help.I got stuck on something else and just now I have some time for this. The only way to get around this issue was to cap the holes- even if it does not solve the problem is the only way around. I tried everything you guys suggested. I ended up breaking the edges and relaxing it and manually moving few points for the face.

Now I have another question
Lets say I need the uv seam to run in the middle of the hair (as I do ) how do I paint the hair if it is separated by the seam? How will I be able to make continues strokes for the hairs if there is a seam on the middle and the two parts are separated? I am planning to hand paint all the textures so not really sure how is it done? Should I just put the seam on a spot where will be easier for me to paint after that. I am just confused because sometimes the seam would probably work better for normal mapping and if I do that then it will bother my texture work.
Thanks again

Neox

you would definitely make some preperations to it to use relax or pelt on it in a good way, without many overlaps and crazy ripped apart eyes, number 1 would be, capping the eye holes into one vert and relaxing that one so its perfectly in the center of the eye, the second one would be collapsing the mouth verts inside the uvs, otherwise upper and lower lip will overlap, you can and should open them once the relax procedure is done, but for releaxing you should keep those things in mind. Basicly pelt is never good for heads, its awesome for arms, legs, torsos, on herads i'd go with some planar mapping, with the said preperations, relax and stitching. Unwrapping a head this way is just a matter of seconds to a few minutes depending one the complexity of the head, but pelting will always result in some work afterwards.

achmedthesnake

mannnnnn use roadkill - (its simpler and easy), and then use renderhjs's textools to tidy it up....

disanski

Thanks Neox and achmedthesnakke. I understand I need to cap the holes and yes i got the overlapping in the lips but it was easy to fix manually. As I said I was just looking for a way to stay in max without need of jumping to other application.
UVW done and not afraid of them any more hahha- they were really scary couple of months ago.
Thanks everybody

Neox

uvs these days are piece of cake, super sweet compared to a few years back, i remember days when i had to unwrap for a longer time then actuelly modelling... crazy!

Neavah

This is a shot in the dark - but try going to the face subobject in the unwrap and hit the 'Exp. Face Sel To Pelt seam' instead of individually selecting the polys (assuming that that's what you mean when you "select all the face you want to pelt").

If you have several 'pieces' selected when you pelt it will only stretch one... maybe theres some other bug with that to explain whats happening....? Good Luck!