[UV Mapping] What to do when "unfold" doesn't "behave" normally / as expected?
EZ all, I've started using Max again over the last couple of days because I've had some time on my hands finally. I haven't forgotten TOO much, but I just have a quick question about the "unfold" feature of the Unwrap UVW modifier. Usually the command works just as expected (if I can picture the UV's unfolding in my head, it usually works fine in practice too), but theres a few examples when it seems like "unfold" makes strange bodge workarounds, when there was no reason to. Im not talking about examples where the result is a load of jumbled up garbage (usually resulting from bad, non-unfoldable seams/UV's), Im talking about cuts and joins being added where there was no need to, resulting in something only "half right", but too messed up to work with.
To make it easier to picture, imagine a simple box. Now say you wanted to unfold a whole ring of its faces, leaving the two remaining faces seperated (which could be stitched later or just "flatten mapped". With the ring of faces seamed up, you added a final seam on one edge of the cube, somewhere along the ring of faces. This seam will act as the "cut", allowing the ring to be unfolded into a "line". Okay, everythings ready now, so you select the whole ring, then unfold... "SURPRISE!", even though you clearly added a "cut" seam; Max seems to have taken it upon itself to ignore that, and add its OWN cut somewhere else for no apparent reason.
In that example, theres no obviously harm done, it means nothing, but in others it can force you to take a long winded approach involving loads of stitching and tweaking, when you shouldn't have to, because the original setup was completely unfoldable (all square edges/folds, no strange, conflicting angles on seams), and would've worked like a papercraft model.
Thanks for giving this a read! If you want, I can post a screenshot to give some specific examples. Right now I'm just going get started on doing things the long winded way (no point in stopping completely), but I just hope theres a trick to the unfold command that Im missing!
Cheers
To make it easier to picture, imagine a simple box. Now say you wanted to unfold a whole ring of its faces, leaving the two remaining faces seperated (which could be stitched later or just "flatten mapped". With the ring of faces seamed up, you added a final seam on one edge of the cube, somewhere along the ring of faces. This seam will act as the "cut", allowing the ring to be unfolded into a "line". Okay, everythings ready now, so you select the whole ring, then unfold... "SURPRISE!", even though you clearly added a "cut" seam; Max seems to have taken it upon itself to ignore that, and add its OWN cut somewhere else for no apparent reason.
In that example, theres no obviously harm done, it means nothing, but in others it can force you to take a long winded approach involving loads of stitching and tweaking, when you shouldn't have to, because the original setup was completely unfoldable (all square edges/folds, no strange, conflicting angles on seams), and would've worked like a papercraft model.
Thanks for giving this a read! If you want, I can post a screenshot to give some specific examples. Right now I'm just going get started on doing things the long winded way (no point in stopping completely), but I just hope theres a trick to the unfold command that Im missing!
Cheers
Replies
I think what you're looking for is just the relax tool? Select your edge seams, break them, and then relax it all so it literally 'unfolds' before your very eyes.
Select all the faces of your object, make a planar map just to get rid of any seams you might have.
Make your seams where you want(8+1) using the button "convert edge to seams" and press quick peel ! this should work fantasstic no need for anything.
I think I'm just explaining it wrong lol. It might also be that the way I normally unwrap models is a bit counter-intuitive or unusual. Basically what I do is treat all my unwrapping as if I were goin to pelt map EVERYTHING (even though I only pelt map things if they're more organic shaped rather than hard edged), so I go around making seams the UV unwrap mod, then go into face select mode and press "expand face select to seams" for each island. Once I have a region selected, I choose whether I should Unfold, flatten or Pelt map it.
The main reason I like to manually add seams rather than leaving it all up to Max, is because it gives me more freedom to choose how I want the model to unwrap, and it also allows me to picture the UV template in my head (or something like that LOL).
@GeeDave: Thanks for the reply, I'll try the relax tool, because I always make my own seams instead of selecting all polys and hitting flatten (which I've just read about in one tutorial)
@Respawnrt: That sounds interesting man, but I dont think I have a tool called Quick Peel. Is it only included in 2012+? I have Max 2011. Also, what did you mean by (8+1)?
Thanks!