UV editor
I've been using 3DS max for about a year now. I love the modelling process but the bane of my life is UV unwrapping. I just cannot get my head around it. I spend hours trying to unwrap a model and in most cases its takes longer to unwrap it than model it. I've watched dozens of tutorials but they never specific to my needs, which is fair enough. I'm making weapons mostly, so watching a video about unwrapping a cube doesn't help too much.
Is there a plugin for 3ds max, or an external application which can make my unwrapping life easier?
Or failing that, any tutorials specific to unwrapping game weapons?
Many thanks in advance.
Is there a plugin for 3ds max, or an external application which can make my unwrapping life easier?
Or failing that, any tutorials specific to unwrapping game weapons?
Many thanks in advance.
Replies
textools, by renderhjs, is the best out there atm imho. many helpful things that can speed up UVs. But Uvs are very time consuming and until you have a workflow down pat doing the UVs will very likely always be longer then modeling.
Although now days, for me anyway, with the advent of new tools along with many long hours of staring at the UV editor the time required to UV has significantly decreased to just a few hours for a full next-gen weapon.
The following tools will cover about 95% of everything I ever encounter when it comes to unwrapping: (The only exception is the occasional need for Pelt mapping in the event that I have some wonky organic shape)
Flatten mapping
Quick Planar Map tools
Unfold mapping
Cylindrical Unwrapping (Use the Best Align function for all things remotely cylindrical!)
Edge stitching
Make a hotkey for Automatically packing your UVs. This is especially helpful when working with a lot of objects and you need to reorganize everything quickly.
Relax dialog
Hotkeys for everything, including setting up a hotkey for Element mode!
Search these boards for MoP's normalize UV script.
That's probably the majority of all the tools you will ever need. Unwrapping is an absolute breeze if you master these fundamentals. (If I'm missing one let me know
I cover the majority of all of these tools in my UVW Unwrapping tutorial on 3dmotive if you haven't checked it out. If you have, feedback or questions are welcome!
For example if you where to do a cylinder with end caps:
You turn on peel, select the top/bottom and break, then select a vertical edge and break and you're done.
With the cylindrical mapping you would be stuck having to either planar map the caps or relax them in addition to relaxing the cylinder because it fits the mapping to the bounds of the UV space which may not be proportionally correct for your cylinder.