Working with strange UV layouts?
So I have this
And it looks like this, which looks great UV speaking. Though editing this via PS would be difficult so I usually unwrap in a less-than-optimal way with a lot more seams in the texture to make it work with photoshop editing and end up working a lot more to make the seams perfect (IE straightening the UV maps).
So is there any techniques that help to make this easier? I personally use blender and know it has texture editing that I've never touched on. So what do you do to work with UV unwraps that are oddly shaped. Just go back and forth and use tools to skew the texture to match up better? Idk im spitting out nonsense now.
Replies
In terms of workflow I'll rough in some broad areas and the edges to understand how the UVs are reacting. From there it's just a matter of refining and tweaking. If I don't know how something is going to look, like a highlight, shadow or defining shape, I'll keep it on a new layer.
Alternatively you can use zbrush to poly paint on the 3d object, and you can use the layers in zBrush if you know how.
If this is something for realistic content, baking out the normals and amb occlusion is going to be a great help. You can use these maps and dissect the normal map channels for different edge effects and guides for texture painting.
However, the pole on the picture with the UV's look bad. Poles = Pinching = Bad
The problem here isn't the UV layout but the unwrap: you need to add one or more splits to that pole in order to make the TD more uniform.
What about seams? Seams ain't a problem here. You have a stone there (or some other kind of organic model) which you should be 3D-painting anyways - which is the best way to avoid getting seams when working with rock formations, trees, characters and other organic models.