Unwrapping heads

Zwebbie

Ok, my problem is this: Whenever I unwrap a head, too much UV space goes into parts that don't need a whole lot of detail. The back of the head doesn't need the attention and love the face does, but simply making the back smaller gives some stretching.
Something I'm having more problems with still, is the unwrapping of the face itself. The nose and eyelids, due to sticking out/in, get only little UV space, while they draw a lot of attention and need subtle detail.

So, do any of you have tricks or tips to deal with the UV-mapping of heads/faces, or is it something I'll have to learn to live with?

Rick Stirling

Yup - think of exactly what you just spelled out as the problem, and therein lie the solutions.

You've got complete control over the UVS, so make the back a bit smaller if you want. Make the front plane of the nose a bit thinner so that you get the sides to fit too.

Ruz

obviously if yuo head is going to be bald, you might want to have more even uv's so each area gets detail, but if the scalp is hidden then there is no point giving priority to the areas you won't see.
I personally think that you should try and keep the uv's in a simliar proportion to the actual 3d mesh, nice to paint in 2d whats actually there in 3d, particularly if doing a likeness.
nothing worse than weirdly distorted uv's to paint on

MoP

Ruz: Actually, I'd say there's nothing worse than the sides and back and top of a skull taking up 3/4 of the texture map when people will only ever really be looking at the face

Allow stretching and distortion on areas that will get less attention (as long as it still looks good), and do what Rick said with the nose to keep everything as even as possible.

Rick Stirling

[ QUOTE ]
Ruz: Actually, I'd say there's nothing worse than the sides and back and top of a skull taking up 3/4 of the texture map when people will only ever really be looking at the face


[/ QUOTE ]

But remember also that in many games you'll be staring at the back on the main character, or all of his AI controlled buddies as they hurl themsleves at a barrage of Hun guns.

A top tip, since I'm such a nice guy:

Shrink the ears on the texture down to about 80% of their size. This gives you plenty of space to paint int he backs of the ears, and the hairline - people forget there is a hairline behind the ears too.

Another top tip:
After you have completed you UVS, apply a checkerboard texture to the character. Make sure it has small enough squares so that you see the distortion, and just rotate the character so that you can see it from all angles. Look where the stretching is at.

This works better than having a a check applied when UVing - you are taking yourself out of UV mode and putting yourself in a "Lets take a step back and look at distortion" mode.

Ruz

well mop, think you are slightly exaggurating there:). I didn't say it should take up 3/4 of the map, just that if your character is bald or has some other interesting feature on the back of his head I would change the ratio accordingly.
Personally I don't like uv's that are distorted 'too' much for major facial features, although I generally do shrink the back of the neck down a fair bit as hair can still look good even if the uv's are really distorted
I probably make the ear uv's bigger thne most people as I like ears
I always start with a cylindrical uv modifier , find that works the best after trying all the various pelt style unwrappers and thinking not too much of them

Joao Sapiro

what i usually do it map each faces ( front, side back ) trying to have same texel consistency, and if the character has hair or is bald, i scale up the head uvws inside its uvw itself.

oXYnary

Slightly off subject, but what do you think of using the pelt uv in max for heads? I tried it, and I was unsure I liked the results. I still ended up relaxing and then manually moving the lips and eyelids so they didn't overlap or create a "O" shape.

Ruz

I personally think pelt mapping is good for awkward shaped items/accessories, but for heads I seem to have to do a lot of manual tweaking which kind of defeats the object.

Mongrelman

Using a projection painting app eg. zbrush, bodypaint 3D, tattoo you can slap textures onto the areas with distortion to create a base to work on in Photoshop. The problem from the uvs then would be whether there is enough texture space in the distorted areas to prevent it looking weird on the model.

Eric Chadwick

One problem with distorted UVs is those areas will be mipped faster than the undistorted areas, so you wind up with an even blurrier mess than you think you'll get.