Seams in HP models - how to avoid?

[Deleted User]

First, i'm not a texturing expert.

Now, how would you approach UV unwrapping for shapes like those two below to avoid visible seams?



I got access to dDo/nDo/Photoshop and Zbrush. I see that there is some possibility to hide UV seams with dDo by specifing AO baked on black background, but if I plug inverted AO I get every pass very dark after dDo finish processing data.

I would love to hear about some good (and fast) workflow that works with dDo so I would not have to mess to much with it by hand.

GragGunslinger

The things you want to consider are:

-Breaking your model up in the UV Space by smoothing groups, so everywhere you have a hard edge on your model, you'll break your UV island. This will insure you get a good normal bake.

-With that being said, keeping your UV islands as large as possible so that there aren't any random splits in the middle to create seams on large flat surfaces.

- Most objects have seams on them, because of how they're put together weather it be material changes, welding, corners, you just have to find a way to hide your seams in places that would make sense.

-Can we see where you're getting your seams? it might help to see what exactly the issue you're running into is.

-dDo is great, but don't let that be the artist, YOU'RE the artist.

[Deleted User]

One idea was to split in in half, I get two islands and seam in the middle.

Now what I need for this is to get the same texture on each part, mirrored. This will solve seam problem. To solve problem of identical texture on both sides I will generate two textures and just use only part of the second texture to make the look of second island different, but I will edit only middle of the second island texture so the part of the texture where the seam is will stay the same (mirrored).

But I don't know how to get exactly the same texture on both without placing one UV under other so I could mess separately later with mirrored part of the texture.


Other approach was to split it on least visible edges, I get two islands and those most visible edges will get seams.

Problem is that I have couple similar parts that are visible from every angle so I need nice edges everywhere.

[Deleted User]

Is there a way to match shape of UV islands if they are from similar parts but after unwrapping they are distorted differently? I could then just duplicate and move texture manually to second island to play with it.

Noors

Do you really need to texture your hp ?
You could delete half of the mesh and redo a symmetry so the uv's are perfectly overlayed, but i would fix the seams in a 3d painting software, zbrush or such...

[Deleted User]

OK, I think I figured out good workflow.

1. I create two versions of the model with different UV's, just like those I posted upper.
2. Than I create all textures (xNormal,nDo,dDo) for each UV set, so I get two versions of each texture, with seam in diferent place and different UV's.
3. I leave the one with seam in middle untouched.
4. The one with seams on the edge I take into Zbrush, subdivide and bake its texture to polypaint.
5. Than I copy UV's from the model with seam in the middle to this HP with polypaint, and I bake polypaint back to texture with this UV.

Thanks to this I got the same UV set with two textures that I can blend with a mask just in place of those edges. The middle seam still can be a little visible but only if you zoom in it to fill the screen and only in Marmoset, when rendered in Modo it looks OK even when zoomed.

A little hand work but I prefer this way than creating all textures by hand from scratch


Thanks everybody.

PS. Below is example shot from top and bottom, nice edges on both sides and no middle seam visible.

Brygelsmack

Noors wrote: »

Do you really need to texture your hp ?
You could delete half of the mesh and redo a symmetry so the uv's are perfectly overlayed, but i would fix the seams in a 3d painting software, zbrush or such...

Does it matter? For something like that the LP shape wouldn't look that different.