Infected Worm

Chaosv49

Hey, the progression of this small project is on my sketch book but I need help with pelt mapping.

Here is the current base mesh



Here is the pelt map (I'm a begginer texturer)



This looks clean to me but I'm getting huge distortion problems and I dont know why, can any help me?

Thanks for your time
-Chaos V49

dolemite

I think you might need to take the pelt seem all the way down the middle. Or separate the part that is pinched right now, and stamp it down by itself. Then try using the relax tool.


It seems poly heavy. What is this going to be used for ?

Chaosv49

Its not that much polys is it? Its just for rendering for personal use and practice. I dont understand what you meant by the middle thing.

Mark Dygert

Cylinder unwrap would work better and not be as messy. But you should be able to get some good results with pelt also. At the top you need to extend the cut down to the inner most rounded poly and detach the "end caps". Think of it as its trying to unwrap a tube but you didn't cut it all the way down. Remove the end caps and cut it all the way down one side and it will unfold a lot easier.

Also Tools > Relax will help get rid of some deformation but not on the way it is currently unwrapped.

And yea by looking at the density on the unwrap, as opposed to the overall shape of the object, there seems to be some wasted geometry. But it depends on how its going to move if its really needed or not.

Chaosv49

Thanks guys, I just found another problem but with 3dsmax. When I rotate with the arc rotate tool I get boxes instead of my model.
2 years in max (on and off) and I cant even remeber how to reset the UI. :P

Mark Dygert

Press O(oh not zero) on the keyboard. It toggles on and off Adaptive Degradation, probably hit it by mistake.

Chaosv49

Ah dude thanks for that What a stupid mistake.

BradMyers82

Here are the cuts I would make. Only the long cut on the top you would want to put on the underside to hide the seam (I placed it there just so you could actually see it).

Like vig said, pretend its a real world object. Think of the types of cuts you would have to make on that object to flatten it out. Like a banana or an orange.

Chaosv49

Thanks brad

(Edit - never saw you done a seams picture)

BradMyers82

Just one seam going down is all you should need, and the loop around the mouth, because there is a sharp angle there. you need seams at the sharp angles to flatten stuff out.

Chaosv49

The teeth are seperate. Infact here :

BradMyers82

No problem, making cuts can be a tricky concept to learn, but just keep playing with it and you will figure it out. Just find the sharpest angles, here the mouth to body transition is more than 90 degrees, and put a cut around there. You should post your whole WIP here, I want to see this worm textured now.

BradMyers82

Here's how to handle the teeth, since I have your attention. You want to attach all your objects into one, so you can make one set of uvws. but before you attach all the teeth, just attach one of them, and unwrap it like I did in the seam drawing (pelt should work fine).
Then copy that one tooth, and place it where the others were. This way, all your tooth uvs will be in the exact same place. It will save you texture space, and you will be able to just texture the one tooth, and they will all have that texture.
Just by coincidence, I made a tutorial on my site explaining this a while ago, incase your interested: "mirror uvs and basic operations in 3ds max tutorial" http://www.icantbelieveitsnothighpoly.com/Tutorials_New.html

Chaosv49

Damn brad, your good

Chaosv49

BradMyers82 wrote: »

Here's how to handle the teeth, since I have your attention. You want to attach all your objects into one, so you can make one set of uvws. but before you attach all the teeth, just attach one of them, and unwrap it like I did in the seam drawing (pelt should work fine).
Then copy that one tooth, and place it where the others were. This way, all your tooth uvs will be in the exact same place. It will save you texture space, and you will be able to just texture the one tooth, and they will all have that texture.
Just by coincidence, I made a tutorial on my site explaining this a while ago, incase your interested: "mirror uvs and basic operations in 3ds max tutorial" http://www.icantbelieveitsnothighpoly.com/Tutorials_New.html

I see. I understand. I just have gums in there aswell :P I wanted to try and push myself (I've been using max for 2 years but never had photoshop and wasnt interested in texturing until now

samgriffiths

Hello, I'd suggest cutting you're pelt map in half as it seems it map tear near the top of the map - also, judging by the model the worm would slither and move along the floor, so underlying polygons on the bottom would probably be parallel to the ground otherwise he won't be able to go anywhere

BTW, you could probably optimize the teeth by simply having 5 sided cylinders instead of you're current, this would probably save a hundred polygons.

Chaosv49

Hmmm.. Is this correct?

samgriffiths

I believe brad means, delete the teeth except one - UVW map that, and then ctrl + V and copy it around in the place where the teeth where. This saves you UVW mapping 20 teeth.

BTW, If that blue line would be you're seam, you should place it underneath so that it is less visible - seam placement is important.

Chaosv49

samgriffiths

I believe that's placed better, the reason we do this is so the seam in you're texture won't be on-top on the model - judging by the concept this would be the most visible place. Good work so far :thumbup: keep going.

BradMyers82

Yeah, man that looks right, just make sure your seam goes all the way to the tip of his tail, I can't tell if it is. flatten the modifier stack when your done unwrapping the worms body, and attach the gums (in edit poly modifier click attach and choose the gums).
If you deleted the inside faces of the gums (which you should have done), to pelt map the gums, just through a unwrap uvw modifier on the stack and place one seam down the middle of the gums (from edge to edge) like i did in the example. lastly the tooth thing, it sounds like you understood me correctly. good luck.

BradMyers82

Sam is right on all accounts

Chaosv49

BradMyers82 wrote: »

Yeah, man that looks right, just make sure your seam goes all the way to the tip of his tail, I can't tell if it is. flatten the modifier stack when your done unwrapping the worms body, and attach the gums (in edit poly modifier click attach and choose the gums).
If you deleted the inside faces of the gums (which you should have done), to pelt map the gums, just through a unwrap uvw modifier on the stack and place one seam down the middle of the gums (from edge to edge) like i did in the example. lastly the tooth thing, it sounds like you understood me correctly. good luck.

Weird, I cant see that other picture I put up. Poly count is doing this weird threaded mode that I didnt chose. It changes all the time.

Mark Dygert

The tip should be welded to a single point, or you should detach it. Or run a pelt seam around that round end cap. It will cause problems when you go to sim a pelt pull.

I suggest taking a few min before you unwrap to optimize the tail. You could probably shave 50-100 tris out of the tail easy then you can add in a few more vertical loops to help it deform better.

Also the whole process would go much easier if you waited until after the worm was rigged to pose it. I know it makes for a less exciting model to work on, but it really would makes each step a bit harder. Now instead of positioning bones in s a straight line you have to try and match the odd angles. Not to mention the unwrap modifier would understand the object a little better leading to better results.

Chaosv49

You guys are so helpful. : P

samgriffiths

We're all here to improve and offer help to each other, forums and communities are an invaluable asset when it comes to improving.

Chaosv49

Vig wrote: »

The tip should be welded to a single point, or you should detach it. Or run a pelt seam around that round end cap. It will cause problems when you go to sim a pelt pull.

I suggest taking a few min before you unwrap to optimize the tail. You could probably shave 50-100 tris out of the tail easy then you can add in a few more vertical loops to help it deform better.

I've welded the tail to 1 point.

Chaosv49

I clicked a face and expanded out but does not select the circle, is this ok?

EarthQuake

Really you shouldn't have that blue seam in the inside of the mouth there, you can unwrap that to a nice circular shape.

Chaosv49

Is this an ok unwrap for the body? if so I'll try to stuff with the teeth and gums.
There is distortion in the circle part but thats because I didnt unwrap it?

Mark Dygert

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzRHRWgkDxY[/ame]
It's good that you welded that one point. But this is what I meant when I talked about optimizing the tail and then adding vertical loops for deformation. This should be sorted out before any unwrapping is done.

Chaosv49

I dont understand -.- I had some clean looking checkers for the distortion test but when I scaled it down I get big squares.

Chaosv49

Ok, I've followed some tutorials and this is what I've got so far

I really want to get this right so I dont want to texture it until the map is right.
I was watching somone from autodesk doing a pelt mapping demonstration and he had big checkers like I did when I scaled my uvs down to fit the area but thats correct isnt it?





I havent done the teeth and gums
Will I have to put every tooth in the UV space or just one and clone it?

Somone please reply :P

Mark Dygert

Instead of unwrapping each tooth one at a time. Delete all but one tooth, unwrap that one tooth, then copy and move each copy into place of the old teeth. What this will give you is a bunch of teeth that share the exact same unwrap.

If you want a unique texture on each tooth and you have the space, you can arrange all UVs for the teeth to be unique. If not select all but one and move them one unit over to the left or right. The easy way to move them accurately is to, click 1, and in 2 type 1 and hit enter, then unclick 1.

Chaosv49

thanks man. I really want to move on, is the body ok?

se7ered

I would say unwrap one and clone it. It should create a stack of unwrapped teeth in your UV that are all stacked on top of each other. Way faster than unwrapping each one.

BradMyers82

Yeah, move on. The checkers look good enough as is, and although there is much optimization that can be done, I think its best that you keep it simple since this is for learning purposes.
vig did a better job explaining what I was talking about with the tooth cloning. Do that next, and if you get stuck; I did give you that link to my tutorial, which is a complete walk through of the whole process.

Mark Dygert

Depending on how much the tail tip is going to move around, you could run into the deformation issues I raised earlier in the video. If you keep it pretty stiff then it should be fine. You might not be planning on animating this worm, but good deformation is key when you model creatures and characters for games. Also you could shave out a bunch of polys all over the model. If you do it by collapsing or removing edges with Preserve UVs turned on, it won't effect your unwrap. But if you weld verts it's going to mesh things up and cause you to re-unwrap it, which isn't so bad now that you have the steps down.

Chaosv49

Got it. Hmm, wait I'll have to do the UV Mapping again if I clean up the model wont I? I'll do that first then do the teeth and gums.

Mark Dygert

If you do your clean up in edge mode, with "Preserve UVs" checked on, you can "Remove" edges (Hold ctrl while clicking remove to get rid of the verts also) or "Collapse" edges without it screwing up the UVs. You can even move edges around and it will preserve the layout.

The only time it will screw up your UVs is if you go into vert mode and start welding. If you do that, then yes you will need to redo or at least touch up the UV layout. Thats the main reason why people collaspe or remove edges when optimizing. Welding is kind of a last resort or a quick and dirty way to get it done before you unwrap.

Chaosv49

Having a really hard time just trying to pelt one tooth -.-

Edit - Ok, I've done the tooth and I'm gonna copy that and put them in the place of the other non mapped teeth.
Question - How will I get all my stuff in the same uv render?

BradMyers82

That's why I was saying make sure to attach your objects. In the edit poly modifier you can click the button "Attach", and choose what objects you would like to attach in your scene (in your case the gums and teeth). This will make them all one object, even though the verts are not welded. When you have it as one object, the uvs will all be on one sheet, and you can render your uvs all on one nice sheet.

[Edit] by the way, when you have a unwrap uvw modifier on top of your edit poly modifer its best to collapse the unwrap modifier every time you want to go back to the edit poly modifier to make adjustments. Sometimes, if you don't collapse the stack, you will loose the uvw unwrapping that you were working on.

Chaosv49

I'm not a beginner I know what attach is, I just completley suck at texures and uv maps. I've done the teeth and the body and I've attached them all as one but it looks like this :

BradMyers82

yeah, that's right, now select your individual uvw chuncks, I do this by going into face mode, selecting one poly and then hitting grow untill it goes all the way to the seam edge (there is probably a easier way but thats what I do) Anyways, once you have your chunks selected move the outside of the box where your uvs go, and scale them so you can fit them all on one sheet. Once you think you have the scale right, place them neatly in your texture square. Try to get them in there as tight as possible.

[Edit] "exp. face sel to seams" will get you just one uv island.

Chaosv49

Okay, I've done but I'm trying to figure out how to just get one tooth for them all. Its sort of making me select all of them.

Mark Dygert

In the UnwrapUVW modifier if you turn on "Select By Element" under Selection parameters, you can click on a tooth in the main viewport and it will select all the faces for that object in the editor window also.

BradMyers82

yeah, you want just one tooth so that your uvs are on top of one another. Thats the point, it takes less texture space and you probably want the same texture for all teeth. If you need unique texture space though, click the faces of one tooth, (in the viewport) then click unattach in the uvw editor. This will make the uvs not welded for that particulr tooth, meaning you can move the uvs individually now.

Chaosv49

I've got one tooth for all of them now but the body is a mess and its not the same pelt map I made.

BradMyers82

hmm... did you move down the stack to edit poly? That's what I was trying to warn you about, if you did. If it is lost, it really shouldn't be a big deal to just pelt it again. It's probably faster than trying to load one of those max autosaves to recover you know.

Chaosv49

Ok uhm, Im trying to do the pelt again. On my uv area right now I have the inside which is planar, the teeth all in one but when I select the body it dosent do the pelt map the same and Im using the same method. There is also barley any points on the pelt stretcher.

Chaosv49

Lol, my seam has actually went away.