Good way to pack many UVs?

C86G

Hi there.

I wonder if there´s a more efficient/faster way to pack UVs than doing it by hand.
I´ve got an unwrap of a lowpoly gun with split UVs/smoothing groups. So far so good but there are 400+ single uv chunks that need to get packed properly. I know the Max tools, UV Master and Tex Tools but afaik there is no "1 click solution" to handle such an amount of chunks easily, right?

Here´s a screen:



The separate parts of the mesh are roughly organized but that´s just for a first overview. How would you handle this?


Am I missing any neat plugin or script?

Enlighten me and thank you : )

XilenceX

Ahem why on earth would you split up a single gun into 400+ UV chunks?!?!?
I believe the tracker knife tutorial has a part about UVs as well. Maybe you should check it out... it's on the front news.

C86G

It´s not that I want to have 400 chunks. I just plit the UVs on the different smoothing groups.

joeriv

never seen a script that can do this properly tbh.

it's hard to tell, but 400 does seem like a lot for a gun like that.

but as I see it, 90% of the work is already done, you already have the parts that belong together in fairly square packs, so just scale everything down to around the size of the square (and just take a optimistic guess)
I then personally arrange my packs around the 0-1 square in a circle.
put in the large chunks, and just work your way down to the smallest ones.

and for a first pack, just keep a good gap open so you can always start over or rearrange a big chunk.

once that is done, just start moving and fiddling with stuff to get everything nicely in there.
It's look daunting, but in reality it doesn't take that long as you might think, and it's more fun then actually unwrapping everything ^^

(don't know if you were actually looking for tips, or just a script, so nevermind me if you knew this already )

C86G

Thanks joeriv : )

What you described is exactly the way I did it so far. Just wanted to know if there might be a better way to do it. But reading that others/you do it the same way is soooomehow satisfying.

And yeah, I was also shocked by the amount of single chunks. I did not expect that. Tri count is about 4k.

gray

...

sorry i read the post super quick with the bottom of the pic off the screen and dident really give it a look for more then a second. i thought you were in maya. sorry i don't have a max solution i'm afraid.

Bek

It kinda looks like you've got too many seams, for example the bevel on the from of the gun seems to be its own shell? Have you tried having larger UV shells, only making seams at 90 degree angles and above? You seem to have lots and lots of tiny shells which will be a pain to pack and texture. For me (just looking from that screenshot) I'd have the front of the gun (except the barrel part) as a single shell. The large portions of the side of the gun too.

Your highpoly presentation on your portfolio looks pretty cool btw, nice model.

C86G

And throwing all the polies from the front into one smoothing group?
Wouldn´t that screw the shading? Can the normal map get that right?

Gotta test it, I think.

Yeah, I have loads of tiny junks caused by many seams.



And thanks, but the model`s design is not my work, it is another awesome design from the game brink : )

Luka

if you dont have a problem with spending some € on it Headus UVLayout is an almost one click solution to UVing. i use it constantly.

CheeseOnToast

Yeah, it does a great job of packing hard surface stuff. When it's calculating it'll only rotate UV islands in 90 degree increments, which is usually desirable for this kind of thing. Not so much for organics though. It's saved me a ton of time doing lightmap UVs.

tigg

Import it into blender, open uv editor, Ctrl-A to get the sizes consistent, Ctrl-P to pack it all into 0-1, padding is controlled in the tool window (T). Then export it back into w/e.

C86G

I don´t have Blender.
Is it worth downloading it just for this operation?

I´m more into getting a glass of wine and finishing it by hand : P

ActionDawg

No, that's a simple operation that could be done in max just as easily. It's literally just a pack normalize.

What I think you should do is spend some time to simplify the smoothing groups to be much less so there aren't so many different islands in the uvs. As long as you bake properly with an averaged cage then you don't really have to worry. The big problem with normal maps is having large gradients, which compress badly in a game engine. I mean you probably won't want to put tons of 90 degree angles in the same smoothing groups (you can though!), but even doing like a 70 degree angle with no smoothing split is just fine.

C86G

Thank you, somedoggy.
I will definitely test different smoothing groups/unwrap solutions and see how it works : )

Stromberg90

somedoggy said the same before me

You seem to have split your uv's in where it is less than 90 degree angles more like 45 degree's.
What I do is setup my uv where I try and keep faces that are up to 90 degree's stitched together, then after I setup my uv's I use the island to smoothing groups from turbotools or textools.

So I think you could lower your uv islands count.
Should be easier to pack as well then

ghaztehschmexeh

I generally don't worry too much about smoothing groups, I just split where it's logical and use TexTools UV islands to smoothing groups script. As long as you split your islands logical then it works. Occasionally I combine smoothing groups where there was a split though.