UV Mapping/Topology Question

kmyung

Hello there- back again with a new question.

I'm trying to UV map a very simple chair, but I was wondering if this giant N-gon in the middle would be an issue? Should I connect the verts to make quads/triangles or is it not an issue since it won't deform?

Also- is it better for me to have the UV shells split individually per every facet of the model or if it's better for me to sew on the UV shells to create one cohesive UV shell. (Images attached).

As always- thank you!

Alex_J

Most of the time, I use UV shells for quick masking in substance painter. Say the front side of the upper part of the chair is to be fabric, then the back piece is plastic or wood, and so on. If you make each of these into separate shells, you can apply your materials very easily. You just use a fill layer per UV shell. 

I also like to construct my topology, as much as possible, so that I can double click a few edge loops and be done with separating out the UV shells. Usually I start with a camera projection and since I made the model myself I know which edgeloops connect the different parts I want to separate into shells. To save even more time, when you are building the model you can grab the actual faces of the pieces you want to be separate shells, and extract them. This separates the vertices at the border, so when you UV the shell is already separated. Even for deforming objects this works so long as the vertices along the border don't move.

One thing you will learn is that the orientation of your shells matters. You probably want the wood grain running down the legs all in the same direction?  So you got to make sure your shells are all oriented the same way. Well, you don't have to, but it will make your texturing much faster if you do. 

About the n-gon, I don't expect it would be an issue, but its not a big thing to connect those corners together anyway. Just keep moving forward with this asset and a lot of this stuff will become clear -- it's more complicated to explain than to just learn by doing.