Best Tutorial /Book in learning UV Unwrapping in Autodesk Maya

Jon_Of_Sparta

Hello everyone ! 

I would like to ask you fellow artists on what's the best tutorial or book on your opinion on learning UV unwrapping. 
I finished college with a diploma in 3D Animation but my professor doesn't want to get asked questions and didn't even teach us more in depth about UV unwrapping. Yes he did taught us about planar map, spherical etc. But he never taught more than that. 

I've seen numerous tutorials on the internet and thinking about taking the Gnomon Workshop - Introduction to the UV Toolkit in Autodesk Maya 2018

Because some people say that Maya's UV Toolkit is great and I should switch to Maya 2018 (because I'm still using 2016 & 2017)

Some also say that I should study UV Layout Pro because it makes UV unwrapping even better & easier 

I can't proceed to learning Substance Painter because I can't even Unwrap complex models...

Thank you very much for understanding and I hope you can help me guys...

oglu

if you learn the basics you can use all of those tools.. some of them make you faster but the core workflow is the same...
alex did a good overview on his model on arstation...
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/5JVa1

jerric

I say try out the Gnomon Workshop. There's a 3 day trial which is more than enough time to go through the UV toolkit course.

Brian "Panda" Choi

I am willing to teach you how to UV unwrap through one Google Hangout session if you're willing to pay.

That's heinous your professor isn't answering questions about simple topics.

Eric Chadwick

Have you looked at the tutorials that come with Maya? That's the first place you should go,  http://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2018/ENU/
And did anyone mention... They're free? Expert authors that actually know the software in and out? Peer reviewed too.

Best of luck!

Jon_Of_Sparta

@Brian "Panda" Choi
Thank you for the offer & I've seen your personal works and I love them. But I am sorry but I don't think I can afford 1 on 1 tutorial... 

I could only purchase books or tutorials since I'm a fresh grad at the moment. 

@jerric Have you tried them out yourself ? how was it ? "Eric Chadwick"

@Eric Chadwick
Wow ! I've never heard of that and I'll go check it out as well ... Thank you very much ! Is that your first resource material when learning the software from the beginning ? 

Eric Chadwick

http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#answers

jerric

@Jon_Of_Sparta I haven't tried the UV toolkit course, but the modeling in Maya and texturing in substance designer courses were very informative on discussing the interface and features. I am pretty sure the UV toolkit course includes the project file download so you could unwrap the same model as in the video.

Sage

If you have the latest service pack for Maya 2017 you get some nice uv tools. All I do in Maya to UV is use camera map for quick dirty planar maps then unfold and do stitch selected. It's similar to how I used to work in 3ds Max. I also mark and cut edges then unfold3d. You can do an automatic unwrap then stitch the uv islands, but I find it gets messy really fast.