Hey Polycounters!
Lately I had to do a lot of UV work and I'm not quite satisfied with my workflow.
Usually I start with making my cuts and sews and then unfolding the model.
If needed, I fix some shells and then let Maya Layout the whole thing. DONE.
But at this point I've ran into 2 problems:
- If I am working with circular objects, the straighten UV tool wont make an UV Straight, but rather make it an edged circle. This results in having to fix the UV Shells by hand, which does the job, but is too time consuming to call it effective. I read, that NSUV (Nightshade UV Editor) has a tool for that, but after trying, I wasn't satisfied either.
- If I want to allign certain UV Shells next to each other, e.g. for weapon camo being in the right place, then I have to place some shells by hand which is totally okay and necessary. But Maya won't allow me to Layout (I am using the "Layout" funktion) the remaining shells around the already placed ones. I can't seem to find an options that enables the Layout function to consider the already placed shells in the UV space.
My question now is: Am I missing something? Or are the problems I have common and there is no fix for them. I totally would consider switching to a dedicated UV Tool like Headus, but would like to stay in Maya to have it all in one programm. Or do I finally have to make the step to 3DS Max? (wich I've wanted to do anyway in the future)
Thanks already for the incoming support ♥
P.S.: If needed, I can visualize my problems
Replies
http://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2019/ENU/?guid=GUID-9E98AEAC-F06F-4FAD-9091-DCD30AC9BB26
Seems like one more reason to switch from maya to Max. But the straightening of round UV shells is still as complicated as in Maya, right?
I'm pretty adept with both and honestly for UV work there's not a lot to choose - especially since 2018 came along
I tend to prefer max for splitting my shells initially especially for unwrapping for anything vaguely complex and prefer to lay out in maya, especially if there are multiple objects to handle.
I rarely use packing tools unless I'm half arsing something for a prototype but I do use the grouping in max extensively if I'm laying things out with it.
The Max modelling just seems more intuitive sometimes. I did the same before the Maya 2018 release, but now maya provides a bunch of new tools, so in general, a external UV tool shouldn't be needed
Unwrapping as you go is quite a good idea, build a part, split the uvs up, set texel density and then group them up. This carries through to instances of course.
Also in max if you build things in a certain way you often get free or nearly free UVs that would cost you hours in maya.
The main time-saver is that I've been laying out uvs for 20 years so I've got a bit of a feel for it.
Spending a decent chunk of time getting a good uv layout isn't a waste, it's the foundation of all the things that make an asset look good at the end.
For example: This is the UV to the Object below. It has medium amount of shells, but still enough to make it inefficient to do the layouting by hand, considering taking care of shell padding. Or is it just me being inexperienced?
If you're happy to not share texture space and aren't having to account for LODs or heavy mipping then I expect those UVs will be fine
if you have a tiny texture budget and LODs to worry about then an auto layout is very unlikely to be optimal and that's what happens when you're making a wheel for use in a game.
its usually wise to put parts of the object that are similar colours near each other to minimise the impact of mipping at large view distances (that said, if you're padding that much you should be ok)
LODs affect your UV layout a lot as you need a split in your geometry for every shell - it's hard to illustrate without a picture but you tend to end up with more efficient and better looking LODs (manual or simplygon) if you consciously lay out UVs so that large areas of geometry can be flattened to a plane.
eg. if you were making a cast iron gate, it would LOD better if you planar map the front/back faces and lay out the perpendicular faces off to the side somewhere - that way you can drop it to an alpha tested box with virtually no visual impact . If you mapped the whole thing using strips you'd quickly find yourself with a pretty crappy looking gate that still used a lot of geometry.
And thanks again for your help!
The best thing to do is make the LOD before you do UVs.
A good, simple example is an I-Beam girder. The top LOD will have the I profile, the bottom LOD will be a simple box.
Lay out the UVs for the lowest LOD and then place the top LOD UVs over them so they match up. Any extra shells are then placed wherever they'll fit.