How to make fast UVs for rails, stripes, cylinders?

grimreaperpt

Hey guys, this is a problem that I've always had in 3ds max and never bothered to find an easy way, but today I have a huge road model:



I need to UV the road-side rails, and these need to be "following" the flow like this:



Now, my normal process is just selecting groups of faces, do a planar projection or a peel, then I apply Straighten Selection, then manually adjust the edges to "relax" (because Straighten Selection doesn't relax, or average the model).

I use this method for cylinders, wires, pipes, tubes and rails (for example, stair rails) but it's too time consuming, and I tried searching for a script but the closest I've found was Straighten UV Strip and it just doesn't work.

Do you have a faster method for this specific situation?

I'm using 3ds Max 2015. Thanks!

Eric Chadwick

Look into the Spline UV tool, in Unwrap UVW.

Eric Chadwick

An even faster way to do this would be to select an edge running along the side of the street, make a Shape out of it, then apply a Sweep modifier to make a 3d shape out of it... that way you get automatic UVs and a little bit of depth (like a curb or sidewalk)

passerby

Using lofting in Maya auto generates uvs

grimreaperpt

Thanks for the tip, but both the spline UV tool and the Sweep modifier are giving me very streched UVs. Not sure what I'm doing wrong...

Eric Chadwick

You may just need to tile the UVs. Add a UVW Xform modifier, and increase the V Tile amount.

Or, in the Sweep modifier, enable Real World Map Size. Check the Help file for more info about what this is.

WaYWO

Hey,

maybe you should just do planar projection on each of these faces, not collectively then sew theme and do some manual adjustment

Eric Chadwick

Fuck no. Huge waste of time.

oglu

use headus uvlayout and the shortcut r...

grimreaperpt

Eric, it worked now (and saved me a lot of time!). Never used the UVW Xform modifier before, I didn't even know what it was for. Pretty handy tool

StormyBA

Learn Modo and us the UV Peeler - its pretty awesome

walter

For strip of Quads I often use this script,
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/uv-strip-straightener

wodehia

Good topic.:thumbup:

Deadly Nightshade

For Maya you can do:
Unitize > Select edge ring > Sew together > Unfold along U or V only (or just scale in one direction)

Ramseus

StormyBA wrote: »

Learn Modo and us the UV Peeler - its pretty awesome

Would you happen to have a link on how to use it? I've never understood how to use it and anything I've seen describing it wasn't helpful at all.

adamwalkner5

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