UV unwrapping in 3ds Max9

breakneck

hey all, i've got a quick question. It feels like i am doing this whole uv unwrapping process the most complicated ass backwards way possible.

--For example i have a beveled box that i plan to give each side a unique texture- i've done it piece by piece planar mapped style, i've even tried using cylindrical mapping but sometimes that doesn't work the best.
And that box mapping option?!? does that even work for anything???

--How would I go about UV unwrapping a box like shape without seams? planar map each side seperate or dare you pelt map it(j/k)!! - or could someone point me in the right direction for good refrence material on this subject? thanks

*EDIT* oh my, unfold mapping and flatten mapping- i got a whole lot smarter in like 2 seconds of reading. but if anyone still has some words of wisdom, i'm all ears

Sage

Try crazybutcher's LSCM Unwrap tool. All you do is specify where you want your seams to be, assign them then unwrap. I suggest you shortcut flatten, stitch and stitch options. Also shortcut the subobject components, I just mapped those to the same as the editable poly ones, do the same for the transform tools. Use stitch in edge mode, select the edges you want a broken uv to stitch to it and that's it. If the uv chuncks are flipped it will give you wired results, so all you have to do is flip the piece that glues itself backward. Hope that helps.

http://www.luxinia.de/index.php/ArtTools/3dsmax

Alex

nicedwar

Unfold and flatten should work. Stitching sides together to get a big "+" shaped map that will wrap around your box and then rendering the UVs to texture is how I would do it.

breakneck

cool - thanks for the tips. . .i've been working on a stoopid class project and i spent like 5 hours unwrapping. i knew there was a whole lot easier way to do what i've been doing.

greenj2

In answer to your beveled box example, personally I'd just use the unwrapping tools in your 'UVW Unwrap' modifier, not bothering with any extra 'UVW Map' modifiers. Select each side of your box (including the beveled pieces) and just use the "Planar" option, aligned to the most appropriate axis for that face. By the end you should only have 6 UVW chunks.

From there throw on a checkered material, there should be perfect tiling on the main faces of each side, with some streching on the beveled pieces. To fix this, grab the verts around the outside of those beveled pieces, avoiding the main faces of your box and scale them up slightly until the checker patter is more matched to the perfect pieces. There will still be some stretching, if that bothers you you can break up those beveled piece corners and manually tweak them or use the 'Relax' tool on them if you like. Although that will of course leave you with more seams in the end.

Some beveled edges tend to make Max's relax tool useless so I find myself using a fair bit of manual unwrapping on those objects. Or breaking their UVWs up a lot to be more friendly to the 'Relax' tool and stitching them back up afterwards. Otherwise the 'Relax' tool is a massive time saver. Hopefully some of what I said is legible/helpful.