Reference object = same uvs?

nick2730

Hey guys, im creating a gas pipe refinery theme interior. I have alot of pipes with bolts and the bases. Im trying to think how i can have the same UV to all bolts, if i create a single 6 sides cyl, and use REFERENCE to copy it a ton of times when i got back and apply a UV Unwrap to the original nut, will the unwrap be applied to all its children aka the references copies?

Or if i have multiples of the same object, how do i unwrap them in the save uv space quickly, can i just select them all and apply a planer map and go from their or something?

One of the Objects (still WIP)



overall scene so far

Eric Chadwick

I think you might benefit from working in a modular way instead. UV and texture each piece as you go, before copying them all around. Plan your total UV space by sketching out how many unique elements you think you're going to have. You can also re-arrange the UVs afterwards if you need more or less elements than you planned for. Check the wiki section about Environments for more info about planning and modularity.

vcortis

I'm not sure about Max since I mainly use Maya, but if you make an object and duplicate it a bunch, then go back and unwrap the original, there is a tool you can use to copy the unwrapped UV's to the duplicates.

It's called the transfer attribute tool, and I'm pretty sure there is an equivalent in Max, but you might have to do some searching.

MoP

Or you could just use Instances. Pretty much the same as References but a little more streamlined for this kind of work, I think.

That way you can start positioning stuff even before it's finished, whenever you work on one piece all the others will update.

As long as you always use "Collapse To" on the stack instead of "Collapse All" then your instances will stay nicely synchronised even when you add/collapse modifiers to any one of them.

gsokol

Usually what I try to do is Unwrap while I go to keep things somewhat manageable when I'm finished modeling. For instance, if I made a screw I would know that I will probably clone it several times, so I'll unwrap it first, then clone it. You don't have to have your UV's placed exactly where you would want on your texture sheet, just have it unwrapped nicely...because you can always just grab those faces in the Unwrap editor and move/scale them to your hearts content..as long as they are all together instead of trying to do them all separately.

nick2730

good idea's thnx guys