Struggling with unwrapping techniques, could really do with some pointers
polycounter lvl 3
Workflow 3DS MAX> Substance painter>UE4
Hi I'm struggling with the unwrapping of this asset and others with chamfers and small fiddly bits. I struggled mostly with the rims around the bottom and chamfered areas. I can do it, but it sometimes takes me hours upon hours, for example this asset has taken me up to 4 hours and It's not even fully unwrapped.
I don't quite understand what needs to be welded and what doesn't, and do you want to ideally remove all seams? For example in the picture below I unwrapped the tabletop, fairly simple but a bit fiddly around the edges. Now should I be trying to weld the corners together so there are no seams, or is this ok to work with? I could weld them but the UV's would warp and stretch a lot if I tried to. Unless there's something I'm missing?
For example with this piece I ended up going around the rims, flatten mapping it and then slowly trying to weld bits together, but because of the shapes and chamfering I can't weld the upper parts of the rims as they curve inwards thus creating lots of seams. Is this ok? Or should I be avoiding that.
This part shows one of the problem areas that I'm struggling with, I've got it to a point where the UV are square and ok, but this entire section took me absolutely ages to do.
Am I doing it wrong or does UV'ing just take an incredible amount of time? I'm trying to populate a scene for a game but at this rate I'll be maybe getting though one asset a day!
Are there any tutorials that would be help me with this specific kind of asset? I've looked around but a lot of the unwrapping tutorials are of people, or very basic objects.
Thanks.
Hi I'm struggling with the unwrapping of this asset and others with chamfers and small fiddly bits. I struggled mostly with the rims around the bottom and chamfered areas. I can do it, but it sometimes takes me hours upon hours, for example this asset has taken me up to 4 hours and It's not even fully unwrapped.
I don't quite understand what needs to be welded and what doesn't, and do you want to ideally remove all seams? For example in the picture below I unwrapped the tabletop, fairly simple but a bit fiddly around the edges. Now should I be trying to weld the corners together so there are no seams, or is this ok to work with? I could weld them but the UV's would warp and stretch a lot if I tried to. Unless there's something I'm missing?
For example with this piece I ended up going around the rims, flatten mapping it and then slowly trying to weld bits together, but because of the shapes and chamfering I can't weld the upper parts of the rims as they curve inwards thus creating lots of seams. Is this ok? Or should I be avoiding that.
This part shows one of the problem areas that I'm struggling with, I've got it to a point where the UV are square and ok, but this entire section took me absolutely ages to do.
Am I doing it wrong or does UV'ing just take an incredible amount of time? I'm trying to populate a scene for a game but at this rate I'll be maybe getting though one asset a day!
Are there any tutorials that would be help me with this specific kind of asset? I've looked around but a lot of the unwrapping tutorials are of people, or very basic objects.
Thanks.
Replies
Or if you like I could make a quick vid tut showing my process if you upload the asset?
As for the not needing to preserve straight edges because I'm not using a normal map, is that something you need to take into consideration if you're baking down? I've always found it frustratingly difficult to straighten UV's because as far as I know there isn't a way to just align the verts vertically, or horizontally.
Again, cheers for the video, helped a lot.
Straight edges on uv shell borders can be important as otherwise you might get artifacts where the stepping in the uv editor may lead to artifacts in the normal map.
There is a few straightening tools in the editor. Vertical/horizontal auto straightening of vert/edge rows and also Straighten Selection which rectilinear-ises entire shells. But you have to be mindful of distortion when doing this. Also, you can use the pinning tools to straighten/relax. I might have to do another short video on this!