Unwrapping a pistol, ugh

MainManiac

I have this simple colt 1911 pistol that i want to unwrap, and its just so confusing how im going to do it. Could someone guide me through the process? Im having heaps of frustration. Im already somewhat familiar with the uv tools, what im looking for is a technique to unwrap such an awkward shape. My main problem is the entire handle lower half of the gun.

I have a whole arsenal of weapons ive created to practice on but i can never get past uv'ing

catstyle

mapping -> flatten mapping

start stitching

Uly

: ) that shouldn't be too tricky, man.
http://www.mr-chompers.com/tutorial/video/delilah_07_gun_uvs.zip
poop's always had good tutorials. try this one out, and play with max's relax tool. easy stuff.

renderhjs

its all about defining seams and after that just relax the whole selection. So for starters select everything and hit the "Quick planar map" which will project the UV's all together just like in the 3d space.
Next loop select some edges you want to cut or want to define as seams in your UV and break them there (Tools > Break or ctrl + b).
Once you are done with marking all the seams select all faces and go Tools > Releax. Those are the basic ingredients.

If you are using TexTools in 3dsMax the Explode script is a nice start as it explodes the UV faces to shells based on smoothing groups of your model. Once you have your UV's grouped according your smoothing groups it is just a matter of adding additional seams (again mark edges, and hit ctrl + b) and relax them afterwards.

Once you are done defining all the UV islands and relaxing them you can normalize their cluster sizes, again in TexTools just hit and the UV's should get normalized scales among each other.

IronHawk

Quick rundown from me.

1. Quick planar map to clear the seams

2. look for surfaces that wont deform poorly when laid out flat and make sense for natural seams. Select and quick planar map to break.

3. If you think to yourself. Self this cant lay out flat then put some cuts in the corners that are pinching. This takes a little while to get an eye for.

4. Roadkill geometric this bad boy. You prolly wont have the pro plugin for max so run the tex tools script for equalizing texels and try relax first. I get the best results with relax by planar angles. I recommend using the stand alone roadkill though. This requires step 4a

4a Export to roadkill. I think someone on these boards wrote an export script. If your islands are already set your basically just running the algorithm at this point. Try toggling the LCSM switch to see what gives you the best results. There is a stretching switch as well. Read the docs to get a feel for it.

5 play island tetris and get it looking nice and tight.

bake and enjoy.

r_fletch_r

Renderhjs integrated roadkill into the latest build of TexTools.

Uvlayout also does a very decent job of auto unwrapping stuff. its not bullet proof but its one hell of a time saver

Quick Demo:
http://screencast.com/t/NzllNDZmOT

renderhjs

yeah TexTools can even send it to RoadKill which is free - but you still need to mark and cut your UV seams. Roadkill is just a better relaxer as 3dsmax is, the basics are the same.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2q1fF5TuYo[/ame]

IronHawk

yeah I only installed tex tools for the align by edge tool. Glad to here roadkill is integrated. I'll still run a relax on some islands after roadkilling them. Sounds redundant I know but I've found situations where it gets me better results then just one or the other. Usually situations where relax goes into a tornado and RK will lay it flat but tweaked.

MainManiac

catstyle wrote: »

mapping -> flatten mapping

start stitching

Never thought of that



Thanks for all the other replies guys.

IronHawk, when i try to get the eye for the corners that need to be split i imagine trying to flatten out a paper model but that still usually doesnt work.

Ill check out textools and roadkill.

MainManiac

Hey guys im having some problems with tex tools. So far i love the selections it does but im having relaxing issues

Heres what i selected and double checked the seems to make sure it would fold out from above (i drew a quick mini example) But its doing the weirdest thing ever.

IronHawk

eyeballing where you will need splits takes some time. Relax has problems when faces are overlapped or twisted at least from my experience. I usually run roadkill at this point.

MainManiac

All the seems look like it should just break the bottom of the front of the barrel and flatten it out, thats why im so confused. And the polys in the uv dont even match to where they look like they are.

edit: 0o roadkill did an excellent job

marks

Personally I use like 90% planar/cylindrical unwrap, and stitch seams. Relax is something I use very rarely on weapons.

IronHawk

I know

MainManiac

marks wrote: »

Personally I use like 90% planar/cylindrical unwrap, and stitch seams. Relax is something I use very rarely on weapons.

Id imagine, since guns are made up mainly of flat surfaces

I think ill continue to use tex tool for selecting and stitching as it produces accurate textures.