Maya UVW mapping
Hello all,
I am new to maya and just had a few questions:
in terms of UVW mapping, how can I get the unselected faces in the uvw editor to stop disappearing when I have a face selected?
Also, The planar projections look normalized, is there something Im missing to get them to not be normalized?
Also, when I created a subdivided and smoothed model (my highpoly) it just exports the low poly? not sure how to explain this. Very confused.
Thanks!
I am new to maya and just had a few questions:
in terms of UVW mapping, how can I get the unselected faces in the uvw editor to stop disappearing when I have a face selected?
Also, The planar projections look normalized, is there something Im missing to get them to not be normalized?
Also, when I created a subdivided and smoothed model (my highpoly) it just exports the low poly? not sure how to explain this. Very confused.
Thanks!
Replies
If you are using the 3 key (smooth preview) to subdivide your model, note that it is simply a preview and your mesh has not actually been subdivided. In order to physically subdivide your model, you will need to use the Mesh > Smooth tool.
Don't forget to delete your history...
I usually use face mode to make a rough selection then convert it to UVs to actually move them around, if you are new to it, it can take a while to sink in, but jumping between selection types becomes second nature. The only other thing you might want to check is that you don't have View Contained Faces ticked as this will only show you the actual faces you have selected even if the UVs are shared, which means if you don't have a complete UV shell selected you may be moving hidden UVs.
seems silly. how do I know if im overlapping UVW's then lol
or how do I know where Im placing uv's if i cant see the rest of my unselected uvs?
also, nothing is parented in the scene at all.
anywho, how do I project a non normalized projection, because using the xyz planar projection fits it into the UV square, which is not what I want.
Swapping between face / edge / vert and UV mode is great once you get the hang of it.
also tip for both the uv view and the 3d view, holding ctrl+lmb gets you a menu for converting between component types.
What I want to do is, see all of my maps neatly mapped out so I know where to move/rotate/scale things. Because when I have a UV island selected, the others disappear so I have no clue where Im going.
And If I want to break a polygon or something off of an island I cant do that either, it just moves as an element.
In max you select the poly in the uvw editor RightClick>Break and it splits the polygon. Or in max you hit "Quick Planar Map" and it gives you an accurate, unnormalized projection of your uvw.
also,
I want these items in blue to overlap, any way to evenly overlap them?
Grab this script, has a bunch of useful features, but namely a script to snap/align shells to one another.
Also since you can't actually move anything in UV space in anything but UV component mode, once you convert any type of selection to UVs you will be able to see everything else and thus be able to move things in relation to the rest of the UVs.
Im not a fan of nightshade because it gets rid of some of the default ui which I use a lot eg the smart unfold tools and the general layout but people new to maya might like it.
how do i relax a selection? Right click > relax uvs doesnt seem to be working at all.
not a huge fan of these mapping tools. 3DS max is very streamlined and to the point.
You're just not used to it. It gets easier.
well Im just trying to relax the uv so it isnt normalized to fit in the UVW box...cant seem to find an answer anywhere
EDIT:
also, how do I export texture maps from maya?
Export texture maps? (I guess you are referring to UVW map?)
- Polygons> Uv Snapshot> Browse output folder> click OK
if you are refering to a selection map then use FroTools' Apply random shell colors and then export. http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=92535
"I want these items in blue to overlap, any way to evenly overlap them?"
Select the uv island> goto move settings and make sure Retain component spacing is turn on> hold d + v to move the pivot to a corner vertex> move snap to the piece you want to overlap by pressing v.
It's in the UV Texture Editor. Under Tool>Smooth UV Tool.
Make sure you select the UVs you want to relax, (the whole shell),
and then hit the Smooth UV Tool button, at which point a couple of sliders will pop up down in the left hand corner, one which says Unfold, one says Relax. Click and drag either as many times as it takes to make it look right.
I dont get it, it's not on the uvw map...
also. my normal maps dont seem to be doing anything at all in unity, any tips on this?
this is in unity
here's the uvw map:
as a side note your UV layout is pretty bad it wastes a lot of space, and looks like you just masked a metal photoref with your AO
ok, so how do I fix these normals?
Ive been using maya for a few weeks, the UVW editor is crap compared to max in my opinion. Huge learning curve here.
and yea thats what I did, I cant paint metal and if I do it looks cheesy.
It mostly got flipped if you built the model as one half than used the duplicate and scale by -1 trick to mirror it.
Also like mentioned before the UV layout needs a lot of work, a lot of texture space is being wasted, and texturing could be massively improved since you got no localised detail just a generic metal photo ref at the wrong scale.
I did that and all the normals are flipped correctly? It doesnt look any different from the others.
Also, yea that's exactly how I made it.
Im gonna uvw it in 3ds max, much easier that way using textools.
Even when you're proficient in maya its still going to be horrible
If that is a vertex normal problem you probably need to unlock normals before you'll be allowed to fix it
Make sure faces aren't flipped as well - youll need to turn backface culling on in about 6 places to achieve this with any certainty .
Maya will allow all sorts of stupid shit on a poly mesh that max won't so you need to keep on top of every little thing at every stage in order to avoid weirdness
The I think mayas normals editing is better than maxs and with some customisation I can work more effectly in its UV editor than Max too.
So what exactly is going on here?
How do I get the correct ratio/normalization or what ever it's called because clearly there is some stretching going on here...
This happens alot and I dont know how to fix it.
The closer to a primitive shape the UV shell is, the better this tool works. It needs to have the appropriate seams split beforehand or it won't work.
Flipping shells can be accomplished using the fourth and fifth buttons along the top row of buttons in the UV Texture Editor. Also if you hover your mouse over a button, a description of that tool should be visible at the bottom left corner of Maya, below the MEL command line. You should try experimenting with all the tools so you can get a good idea of what is available to you.
also, Ive begun to notice that as Im editing my uvw's some of my previously mapped objects' islands are "warping" for example: I mapped a cylinder, then attached another mesh to it, and mapped the newly added mesh, and now the cylinders maps are distorted..
These overlapping islands were perfectly straight, why are they all wavy?
also, the end caps of these cylinders look droopy? how?!
I have absolutely HAD IT with these UVW tools.
Relax = does nothing
Unfold UVW = works when it wants to
Planar map = constricts the projection to the box which is NOT how you do it.
Cylindrical map = works when it wants to, also normalizes the projection, again..not what I want.
Move and sew edges = distorts the sizes in what I am stitching, unable to fix.
For whatever reason, my UVW's "morph" into odd shapes/wavy shapes without me touching them.
If anyone wants to help UVW this I will gladly host the .obj for it.
I use Planar Projection, Cut UV Edges, Smooth UVs, Unfold, and Select Shell tools almost exclusively. The only time these tools fail is when there is an issue with the mesh or improperly split UV edges.
Here's a video from a while back that shows my unwrapping work flow; it's sped up, but hopefully it's still useful in some capacity. I use only the tools listed above, all with the default settings.
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my mesh is "see through" in some places...
hah. Actually I am following the tutorials on digital tutors.. :thumbup:
Agreed, but i remember the days when studying Maya i would read/look at the whole html file that comes with it and post my question after trial and error as a last resort.
here's EVERYTHING. Good luck and thank you so much to whoever can figure this crap out.
http://speedy.sh/vMmxy/column-1.zip
http://speedy.sh/vMmxy/column-1.zip
also the maya UV editor isn't that bad, it just takes a little getting used to, i prefer the maya one + a few scripts and my own customizations over the max one.
Since the only type of selection you can modify UVs with is UV selection, I would suggest hitting ctrl+f12 after you make a face selection to convert to UVs so you can move around etc. Isolating the faces is useful if you do some sort of other projection and have a bunch of stuff overlapping, you can easily see how your projection turned out without being confused by other UVs on that object.
When you mentions earlier about UVs randomly moving about, you may have had preserve UVs on, which will move things around if you are manipulating at the component level. Also delete history after projections, because sometimes this will garble your UVs when you transform you object.
See through mesh is a result of adding a colour map with an alpha channel, maya automatically assigns the alpha channel as transparency and then sorting will get confused. Right click and break the connection to fix this.
I downloaded your column, and after fixing a few things, this is the bake I got:
The stuff I had to fix is explained a bit in the following image:
Here is a link for a zip with a High, Low and Cage fbx file, that I used to get a bake from xNormal, the resulting normal map and a xnormal settings file is also in there (You''l need to change the paths though)
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10105386/pc/columnBake.zip
Also, next time try importing the fbx you have exported to xNormal in a new Maya file, because when I imported your stuff, maya complained about malformed faces, and then tried to fix it, which totally fucked all of the normals, this is what xNormal would see, and that is also why you would get bad results.
In my map there are slight seams if you look very closely, but that is just because the tangent space of xNormal and Maya aren't synced, baking in maya pretty much results in a perfect bake.
The setup for this mesh calls for an exploded bake, with all the intersecting parts, but I'll let you figure that out.
To find ngons/messed up faces that xNormal doesn't like, do Mesh-Cleanup, and set it to select, and choose whatever your looking for, I did faces with more than 4 sides.
Lastly, try to keep the materials and scene in check, and delete history. There were over a dozen random materials, and when I tried to bake in maya, it threw an error and wouldn't show my envelope, likely because something material-wise was messed up.
I hope this wall of text helps.
teach me how to be you.
holy freaking crap. Thank you man!
Im guessing the off center of the posts is due to the lack of a symmetry modifier. I really suck at this lol.
I totally scrapped that project and started using the good and trustworthy 3ds max to finish it due to time constraints.
where do I "Break the connection" for the transparency channel?
No prob man, glad to help.
To break a connection, go to your material attributes and right click the text where it says Transparency (Or could be color, bump etc...) and there will among other things be an option to break the connection.
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