Unwrapping in Maya makes me want to chew glass...
No, seriously. I used to know basic unwrapping in Maya. Soon after abandoning Maya and going to Max for many-a-month, Unwrapping became easy, maybe it's more user friendly, hey what do I know.
Now, I just know now that I'm having the hardest time unwrapping in Maya... what the heck. Is it because I'm too used to Max? Is their UV editor just harder to work around?
Sorry to vent before asking the question. I'm looking for a link to some basic tutorials on unwrapping. Maybe somebody can tell me their approach on how to go about unwrapping these basic props.
Why is it also that I simply cannot select my UVs and move them around, it's only that I can move them when I project them.
If you have a little time... and a soul, please help me so I don't have to chew glass because it'll surely be less painful than trying to work this UV editor. :poly116:
Now, I just know now that I'm having the hardest time unwrapping in Maya... what the heck. Is it because I'm too used to Max? Is their UV editor just harder to work around?
Sorry to vent before asking the question. I'm looking for a link to some basic tutorials on unwrapping. Maybe somebody can tell me their approach on how to go about unwrapping these basic props.
Why is it also that I simply cannot select my UVs and move them around, it's only that I can move them when I project them.
If you have a little time... and a soul, please help me so I don't have to chew glass because it'll surely be less painful than trying to work this UV editor. :poly116:
Replies
I don't have a UV unwrapping tutorial link for you unfortantely, but I can suggest to look into the "Creat UV's" and there you can find the various mappings like Planar, Cylindrical, ect. Personally I like Automatic, but sometimes you need to adjust some of the options in there to get the best results.
Depending on the object, I would just automatic map, and then manually stitch the edges I want (there is a Stitch button in the UV edit, has a green up arrow and a red right arrow on a faded checker flag). And then I'll use the unfold button (which is like Max's relax) to get it properly sized.
Another helpful thing to do is to UV in chunks. So, like your chair, if you Automapped the entire thing, sometimes it gets kinda messy. Instead, select the faces of your legs, map them, stitch them... then select another part, map, stitch, ect.. and then unfold all.
I'm not sure what other peoples workflow is like, but personally for me, it's just Map, Stitch, Unfold... and then of course scale to fit into the UV area. hope this points you in the right direction
Oh another really helpful tip, in the UV editor, if you hold CTRL and then press right mouse button, there will be another set of options that allow you to convert your current selection to the options available.. very handy. And, to select all UV's in a shell with single clicks, you have to toggle it with the big Checkered button in the upper left hand corner of the UV editor.. I spent like 6 months learning Maya without knowing that lol
Strangely enough I find Maya's UV editor much much better than any other. I find myself using only a few tools, but being much faster than in Max no matter what plugin I used to help the process.
First off I would recommend getting the Roadkill plugin. It's free! It's possible to work without it but it would be a shame not to use it.
So the first step for a Roadkill workflow is to select all the faces you ultimately want to UV, and planarmap them all at once. I find that it makes the whole process less prone to crashes.
Then take whatever object you want to UV, and select all the edges that need to be UV borders. In order to avoid losing my selection I use quick select sets to store that, for safety (Create>Sets>Quick Select Set). You can then recall them from the outliner (right click on set>Select Set Members) and delete them once you're done.
Once you have all the edges you need make sure to save the scene since Roadkill does not allow any undo and can screw up existing UVs on objects. Small tradeoff.
Finally press the Roadkil unwrap button. You will find that it does an incredible job, even aligning the UV chunk according to the source faces orientation.
If I need to divide these chunks in smaller bit I simply select the desired edges, and hit the red scissor Cut button. For stitching you can use the Weld tool, or the Move and Sew tool (blue tape icon). Note that for welding you don't need to select vertiex couples. You can select a whole bunch, the stitch will figure out what to weld.
To select UV chunks I simply select one vert and use grow selection (got it bound to ctrl+). For UV straightening simply use the 4 arrow icons. Got them bound to ctrl left, right, up, down.
If you don't want to use Roadkill you can use the built-in automatic mapping tool (Create UVs>Automatic Mapping) You can use 4 to 12 sides of projection. Them cutting and stitching.
The finger button at the bottom left of the top icon bar enables soft selection. The B key lets you edit it's fallof.
For faces I tend to select the main frontal plane, planar map that, move to the 3/4 plane, planar map, then the side plane. This avoids any 'tiger rug' distortion of the facial features. Then cutting and stitching.
You can convert selection from 3dverts/edges/faces to UVs to help selection. Can't remember if it's default behavior but I have this set to ctrl-F12. I remember that some marking menus let you do that too but they are a pain to reach.
G'luck!
I then use the "Unfold" command (kinda like Max's Relax UVs, although I don't find the results as consistent) to get a better layout, and then use my custom alignUV scripts (kinda like Maya's min/max UV alignment, but it averages the position instead of clamping to min/max range) to get the borders into a better position.
Then sometimes I hit Relax again with Pin Border and Pin Unselected set to even things out.
I'm not a fan of Roadkill at the moment since it takes your whole mesh. The website says it will accept partial selections in a later release, but it's been saying this since last year and no updates have happened yet AFAIK. I would use it if I could just select a few pieces of a single object and get it to unwrap those, but for now if you do that it trashes the rest of your UVs.
You could also give Diamant UV 1. a try.....I have yet to dig into it but it seems pretty promising...
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=59&t=644892
- Select faces to map.
- Use proper method (sphere, unwrap/unfold, automatic mapping and all those fancy names)
- Stitch / Sew
- Move around and scale. yay
One of the right click combos should let you select UV Shells/Islands and stuff like that too. Very handy if you ask me.
Personally I prefer working with these kind of things in Modo. Only problem there is aligning UV Shells/Islands.
Once I started using Automatic mapping things got a whole lot easier. This way all the faces were laid out I just had to put them together. Yea, I'm silly not to try right clicking and changing the modes to UVs or Faces and so on... while I'm in the UV editor.
Although I haven't grasped everything yet, I feel more comfortable going in.
The Unfold Edge Border (Is this the Unfold UV Border?) That... I'm not too sure about just yet. I'll definitely play with it before I make another reply though. And the 'Relax' command... to tell you the truth I don't remember using that in Max. (Unless it was disguised by some icon and I never bother to look at the name, haha.) So I'm not sure what exactly it does. *shrug*
Roadkill! I HAVE seen this before. I wasn't sure what it is at first. I've seen it used on a character I believe. Didn't realize it's good on other unwraps.
I will try using Roadkill once I get down the basics because I don't want to depend on anything outside of what the program has to offer. Mastering the basics?...or whatever they call it.
Again, thank you so much for all the help guys.
Too bad I don't get home till very late, otherwise I would have posted new screenshots of my unwraps. For now just stuck at work... Sigh...