How to get bigger UV space?

AxelNoir

Hello, sorry if I didn't make myself clear. I was looking at the UV maps for some character models from Uncharted 4 and noticed the artists seem to emphasize greater UV space in the face regions of the eyes/nose/mouth and less in the scalp and neck. I would like to know how I can do something similar with my own character in 3DS Max?

Here is my current UV map for the character I am working on:

And here is Nathan Drake's UV map from U4:

How can I get more texel density in the face regions like that? I tried scaling some parts of the face but it looks like a bad fisheye effect and pinning didn't do much, maybe I am doing something wrong

Neox

seperate the face section, scale it bigger, stich and relax the transition. i am not aware of an automatic solution.

poopipe

can you use pelt mapping and pinning rather than splitting it up? 
 

dimwalker

Scaling face area with soft-selection might work, but you would probably need to adjust selection few times to avoid overlaps and then relax it a bit.

AxelNoir

dimwalker said:

Scaling face area with soft-selection might work, but you would probably need to adjust selection few times to avoid overlaps and then relax it a bit.

Yes I tried selecting the front parts of the face and scaling them up, pinning them and then re-unwrapping them but it doesn't work out too well for me. Not sure if there's a more effective method of going about this as I do not know of any tutorials that cover this.

pxgeek

To add the list of all these great tips:
Experiment with some of max's other tools: including the move and relax brush for local tweaks, it's got strength and falloff settings too.

And if you happen to have UnwrapPro, you can define density via vertex colors or soft selection. AFAIK the plugin won't let you lock border edges, so if you've already aligned your uv's it could be a no-go.

AxelNoir

pxgeek said:

To add the list of all these great tips:
Experiment with some of max's other tools: including the move and relax brush for local tweaks, it's got strength and falloff settings too.

And if you happen to have UnwrapPro, you can define density via vertex colors or soft selection. AFAIK the plugin won't let you lock border edges, so if you've already aligned your uv's it could be a no-go.

Huh, I have Unwrap Pro actually and it seems to have mostly done what i was looking for. That said I didn't know you could define density via soft selection? So how does that work exactly, I just select the verts in the areas I want more density and then unwrap it or something? The video and page don't really mention this feature lol

Edit: Nevermind rewatched the video and there's a section about use vertex paint for texel density

AxelNoir

pxgeek said:

To add the list of all these great tips:
Experiment with some of max's other tools: including the move and relax brush for local tweaks, it's got strength and falloff settings too.

And if you happen to have UnwrapPro, you can define density via vertex colors or soft selection. AFAIK the plugin won't let you lock border edges, so if you've already aligned your uv's it could be a no-go.

Unwrap Pro doesn't seem to respect any verts I pin down in the UV editor, whenever I pin down areas like the eyes or mouth and unwrap again it completely destroys the UV map I made and goes all over the place, not sure if you know of a fix for this?

pxgeek

none that i know of.

The Pro plugin uses its own unfolding/relax algorithm, so it's either/or.

Would be nice though to be able to at least keep boundary points fixed.

AxelNoir

pxgeek said:

none that i know of.

The Pro plugin uses its own unfolding/relax algorithm, so it's either/or.

Would be nice though to be able to at least keep boundary points fixed.

Ah bummer, I was really hoping for a way to keep some things pinned in place because I like the plugin's way of unwrapping much better than Max's default algorithm. In any case then I may have to stick to Max's for now, how would I go about scaling parts of the head I want more density on? Whenever I try to do that it overlaps UVs and then when I unwrap again it looks pretty messy and not uniform unfortunately. Shame really because the plugin's way of letting me paint areas of density is great but not being able to pin areas is a deal breaker for me

pxgeek

Look into neox's and dimwalkers suggestions. With a bit of finessing you should be able to fix overlaps.

Edit:

Rejoice! It looks like you can pin verts with unwrap pro after all

https://polycount.com/discussion/235489/uv-straightening-and-its-perks-on-lod-generation

AxelNoir

pxgeek said:

Look into neox's and dimwalkers suggestions. With a bit of finessing you should be able to fix overlaps.

Edit:

Rejoice! It looks like you can pin verts with unwrap pro after all

https://polycount.com/discussion/235489/uv-straightening-and-its-perks-on-lod-generation

That's so strange, it's not working for me despite following that guide. This is my before and after unwrapping using Unwrap Pro and pinning down some eyelid vertices:

As you can see it goes completely nuts and screws up the unfold after I pin down some vertices and hit unwrap again. Even after holding down the space key it still gives me a real bad UV map... any ideas? @Neox

Neox

I already gave you MY solution. I'd not sit there and figure out a smart semi automatic solution for days. I'd just do it. By hand

I am personally not using Unwrap Pro. I maybe should give it a go. But this is a company internal guide, not everything in there is done by me personally.