Flipped UVW faces Oh My...
Hello Poycount.
OK, Sorry Newb here, but i've been trying to figure this out by myself to no avail.
I started my first full model in Max as a simple crate tutorial from Youtube.
I followed it basically move for move and when i was all proud of myself and got it all uv unwrapped to bake, i found out i had dozens of flipped uvw faces.
So after nights of searching and dinking around with it, and becoming a master at fixing them in various ways AFTER the fact, i have come to wits end on figuring out why it occurs in the first place, or if it's just something you deal with when you get to uv unwrapping. It came to light when trying to bake out my AO map and it was all zebra.
It usually happens when using the cut tool in max, or when using cap poly tool.
It also may occur when having preserve UVWs on and moving an object. I found that one out while attempting to purposely make it happen.
Thing is, it doesn't Always happen every time. Just seemingly random.
Simple Example for demonstration - never mind the model here i am just setting up colors and hotkeys in this scene and playing with the tools.
Left Green Square (Flipped UVW) was a cut using cut tool, Mid and Right were delete poly face and then select edges and used Cap Poly tool.
Same Object cut down the middle. Created another flipped uvw face on one side of the cut but not the other.
And lastly.
Same object moved out on X axis a little with "preserve UVWs On. Adds more Flipped UVWs.
On my crate tutorial model this exact thing just continually increased them as i kept moving the object further away. (solution - turn off preserve UVWs)
On my Low poly i had dozens to fix if not more, and on my high poly it was in the 10's of thousands, and it it just compounds when you clone objects.
I wasn't aware of Xview at first, now i just keep it on.
But seriously, this is all i've done is trouble shoot things like this in my first week in Max ( in 14 years or so).
I can't be the only one this happens to? And while following the tutorial on youtube, this never came up, and the guy even was just slapping it together at times basically just for purpose of moving it along. I did each thing by the book as it were and cut no corners - welded everything, made sure no errant vertices, open edges all that. Lined everything to the grid to the thousandth.
Lined up every vertice to each axis. Use absolute transform on basically everything. Probably went overboard, i don't see other people worrying about it that much in videos ect. But i come from old Unreal mapping and the grid is king.
In the end i did get an ok Normals bake though.
Ah might as well show something as it took nearly a week - intermixed with setting up the ui and hotkeys ect for my liking.
But i think this should take like an hour to do. :poly122:
Thanks for any help.
OK, Sorry Newb here, but i've been trying to figure this out by myself to no avail.
I started my first full model in Max as a simple crate tutorial from Youtube.
I followed it basically move for move and when i was all proud of myself and got it all uv unwrapped to bake, i found out i had dozens of flipped uvw faces.
So after nights of searching and dinking around with it, and becoming a master at fixing them in various ways AFTER the fact, i have come to wits end on figuring out why it occurs in the first place, or if it's just something you deal with when you get to uv unwrapping. It came to light when trying to bake out my AO map and it was all zebra.
It usually happens when using the cut tool in max, or when using cap poly tool.
It also may occur when having preserve UVWs on and moving an object. I found that one out while attempting to purposely make it happen.
Thing is, it doesn't Always happen every time. Just seemingly random.
Simple Example for demonstration - never mind the model here i am just setting up colors and hotkeys in this scene and playing with the tools.
Left Green Square (Flipped UVW) was a cut using cut tool, Mid and Right were delete poly face and then select edges and used Cap Poly tool.
Same Object cut down the middle. Created another flipped uvw face on one side of the cut but not the other.
And lastly.
Same object moved out on X axis a little with "preserve UVWs On. Adds more Flipped UVWs.
On my crate tutorial model this exact thing just continually increased them as i kept moving the object further away. (solution - turn off preserve UVWs)
On my Low poly i had dozens to fix if not more, and on my high poly it was in the 10's of thousands, and it it just compounds when you clone objects.
I wasn't aware of Xview at first, now i just keep it on.
But seriously, this is all i've done is trouble shoot things like this in my first week in Max ( in 14 years or so).
I can't be the only one this happens to? And while following the tutorial on youtube, this never came up, and the guy even was just slapping it together at times basically just for purpose of moving it along. I did each thing by the book as it were and cut no corners - welded everything, made sure no errant vertices, open edges all that. Lined everything to the grid to the thousandth.
Lined up every vertice to each axis. Use absolute transform on basically everything. Probably went overboard, i don't see other people worrying about it that much in videos ect. But i come from old Unreal mapping and the grid is king.
In the end i did get an ok Normals bake though.
Ah might as well show something as it took nearly a week - intermixed with setting up the ui and hotkeys ect for my liking.
But i think this should take like an hour to do. :poly122:
Thanks for any help.
Replies
Also, generally, you model without caring about uv's. Modeling operations make uv messy, and it's perfectly normal. I get that in editors like source or unreal, the mapping on blocks is generated on the fly. Not automatically the case here.
Tho for simple shapes, you can model under a uvw map modifier set to box projection for instance.
Once your model is finished, you re-unwrap it completly with projections.
Preserve uv works well only on flat surfaces, a plane or a cube. It has its purpose, but it doesn't preserve a model uv by magic.
It made unwrapping my low poly :poly142:. I mean I had it unrwrapped in no time, but when i went to burn my AO is was all messed up. That's when the fun began.
Especially bad in my case where i was just duplicating parts that are bad and it just compounded it. I thought that couldn't be right so i assumed i must be doing something wrong with my modeling.
I should have just fixed one of each item, and then re-duplicated the fixed ones. So it's still probably just my newbness and that i need to get used to it. I modeled in max here and there from 1999-2003 and didn't remember coming across this. I'll figure it out.
Thanks.