Blue seams dissapearing from Unwrap UVW in 3Ds Max

Serp

Hi, I'm wondering how I can change my model to edit poly and go back to the Unwrap UVW modifier and still see the blue pelt seams? This way I don't have to keep redoing my seams if I need to change something in the model. I have tried various ways like deleting the unwrap modifier, adding edit poly to the top and so on.

Eric Chadwick

Why do you need to re-do the pelting completely? Seems to me you just need to do a little Relaxing if you add/remove a few faces and get therefore mess up the texcoords a little. You only need to define the pelt seams if you're going to re-pelt it from scratch each time.

Serp

Thanks Eric. I've realised as long as I save my UVS and I can use the green lines as guides if I need to re pelt something. This model has taken me 11 days so far to unwrap.

Eric Chadwick

Huh? 11 days? Time to re-examine your process I'd say. Many artists I know take 1 to 3 days, tops.

Also, no need to save a .UVW file if that's what you're doing. Everytime you collapse the stack, Max just bakes the UVs right into the vertices, they're never removed. Besides, a UVW file is vertex-order dependant, so if you change the model, you won't be able to re-apply it.

Delaney King

Dont panic, that comes with practice. Once your up to speed you should be able to pelt map a character in less than a few hours. It takes a bit of practice though.

It may help you to use material colors while your modelling. By assigning material IDs you can keep track of regions that you plan to map later. Use a multi-sub with bright colors to keep the regions clear.
The bonus with this is that UVWunwrap lets you grab material selections, and using CTRL +edge lets you convert this selection to an edge... meaning a one-click pelt border.

Mark Dygert

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and using CTRL +edge lets you convert this selection to an edge... meaning a one-click pelt border.

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You don't know how much that just helped me, I don't know why it never occured to me before, so simple...