UV mapping creatures with snouts

Rakile

I'm working on a creature that I made recently, and I've run into a mental block for how I should UV his face, since he has a snout. I was just wondering if anyone has any advice on how I should lay out the UV's.

Rhinokey

theres roughly 18 million difrent ways to do this, you can chck out bobo's rat critter he did i think he pimped in P&P, or just cut the snout off and do it seperate, which adds seams, or leave it all as one piece which will add stretching, without looking at the model i could not tell you which way i would choose, got a screen shot of the face in question?

Rakile

Here's a side and front image of my creature's head. I'm not quite sure how to make the wireframe show up in a render, but I'll figure out a way if the wire frame would help

thnom

You can cut the model in half and half a seam down the center. As rhino said you can cut it off, you can also go from a front view and flatten it out and like spread the eyes out (it uses a lot of space!). As its a bird? I'd think about seperating it as its a different colour so they naturally have a "seam".

Rakile

He's supposed to be more dragon-like, but maybe I should modify the design since that question keeps coming up. I hesitate to do the straight on unwrap, as it will cause some stretching, but it my be the best way to go about doing it. Thanks for the input.

FatAssasin

Definitely do the inside of the mouth as a seperate piece, that'll help somewhat. If you're using Max, get a script called uvHelp. Cut out half the head, apply a planar map from the side, and run the script a few times until it's all flattening out. If you want an assymetrical texture, mirror the half-head and then in Unwrap UV, mirror the uv's of one half and put the two halves together so that you can minimize the big seam running down the front of his face. Probably best to put the two halves together so that the parts where the top of his snout are can be welded together to at least git rid of the seam there. But you won't be able to get rid of all the seams.

Rakile

That's a nice script. I think I know how I'll layout the UV's, and maybe use that script to help smooth out my work. Thanks for telling me about it. Oh yeah, as for separate pieces, I'll do the eyes, inside of the mouth, and the horns as seperate objects for the UVs.