Maya UV help
Hello all, I haven't been doing this for long so I decided to take on a personal project over the holidays since I had down time in school. I am currently stuck on how to lay out my UV's for this AR15 that Im working on. Ive been messing with it for a while and each time I think I have it, I get a new headache and more questions to ask than answers. The mesh is separated into different pieces for all the vital parts but can easily be combined as you all may know. My questions are as followed,
1) Should I try to UV the weapon as one whole item or individual pieces by how I made them
2) what would be the best method for UVing this sort of object? Iv heard bad things about the automatic UV option but then I was told to use it and what about planar mapping?
3) Not sure what else to ask but Id appreciate all the help that you guys can provide.
THANKS AGAIN GUYS/GIRLS
1) Should I try to UV the weapon as one whole item or individual pieces by how I made them
2) what would be the best method for UVing this sort of object? Iv heard bad things about the automatic UV option but then I was told to use it and what about planar mapping?
3) Not sure what else to ask but Id appreciate all the help that you guys can provide.
THANKS AGAIN GUYS/GIRLS
Replies
First of all when you are UVing your weapon you said that you have made lots of individual pieces. This is fine but dont UV the weapon when its combined it will just give you a massive headache, UV the individual elements that make up the weapon and leave them to the side for the time being and when you combine it you can place them together in the 0-1 UV space and try to make sure that you use up as much as your UV map as possible. Every blank piece of your map is a pixel wasted. If you want to combine it however you can double click on faces and it will select the entire element so you can pinpoint which part you want to UV for the time being. This will give you a decent scale per each bit.
Automatic mapping is good and i always use it so long as you set yourself up a hotkey to sew the edges together. When i use this method i selected automatic mapping and start to sew the edges together so that it doesnt look all over the place. Also try to use a test texture like a checker patter with numbers to make sure that the scaling is right and that your faces are the right way up.
UVing will take time so be patient. Good luck dude post up some WIP
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In a Mel tab type the 2 lines below.
source "location of Mel file/ninja_uv.mel";
ninja_uv();
Make sure the path is correct.
Example: source "c:/tools/ninja_uv.mel";
You can then hilite the 2 lines and drag it to a shelf to create a button
In a Mel tab type the 2 lines below.
source "location of Mel file/ninja_uv.mel";
ninja_uv();
Make sure the path is correct.
Example: source "c:/tools/ninja_uv.mel";
You can then hilite the 2 lines and drag it to a shelf to create a button
source "/Users/Shared/Autodesk/maya/2013/scripts/Ninja_UV.mel";
ninja_uv();
I get the following error message when I press the execute button.
source "/Users/Shared/Autodesk/maya/2013/scripts/Ninja_UV.mel";
ninja_uv();
// Error: Cannot find procedure "ninja_uv". //
source "/Users/Shared/Autodesk/maya/2013/scripts/Ninja_UV.mel";
Ninja_UV();
mel is case sensitive.