Frusturating UVW Unwrapping

Scizz

I fairly new to 3ds max and I've been trying to create my own assets for my projects. I've have followed and read numerous tutorials and I swear I follow them correctly but something always goes wrong for me when I try and unwrap stuff.

I'll be streaming http://www.livestream.com/scizz on live stream May 5th around 8 or 9 PM EST so anyone who's interested in trying to help me figure out what I'm doing wrong would be a big help.

Edit: I'll end this stream and try again some other time. I kept running into problems and I'm assuming it has to do with how I built the object in the first place. I'll either make a new thread or just edit this one with pics on my progress and problems. Thank you to the people who joined and tried to help. = )

Scizz

alright I'm streaming now if people wanna help. = )

Scizz

after I group all objects used in my scene how do i convert that new object into an editable poly

renderhjs

instead of inviting people here to spend some time on that streaming thing, why not elaborate here whats bugging maybe with a screenshot or 2.

Scizz

im working on unwrapping and baking a pokeball in 3ds max that i made. i just decided to re model it because apparently the way i did it made the whole process way to difficult.

renderhjs

and? whats the problem?

Scizz

the process of unwrapping and baking a simple pokeball is frustrating, and i think its because the way i built it, so im just going to rebuild it and maybe thatll fix the problem. I get weird seams and stuff. and my polygons and edges are way messed up and i have a lot of unnecessary edges.

renderhjs

Just write down whats off (and matters to your question) with a screenshot or 2

Mark Dygert

Screenshots or the problem isn't happening heh =P

Scizz

Sorry if the image is kinda of small, I just use print screen unless there is some other way.

Since this is going to be a small object, should I just make the low poly a sphere. That's what I was suggested. Because as I was unwrapping the person said that I was making things to difficult. But even if I make the low poly just a sphere and unwrap it, how will I texture the buttons on the front?

nicafornica

you will have to bake it them to a normal map

fearian

I don't understand what you're question is here. You want to bake this to a low poly mesh? are you familiar with normal maps or baking at all or do you need a primer?

As far as I can tell you don't have specific problem, like asking 'If I make a sandwich how will I butter it?'

Artifice

I think this might address your problem, if I'm reading it correctly. I whipped this up rather quickly, so ask if it's not clear. It's one of those little tricks that will make you pull your hair out until you see it, then it's totally obvious.

Mark Dygert

I like the quad sphere approach for most things although you should unwrap the box before turbo smoothing it, and you should run spherify on it after you turbosmooth.

Quadspheres are great if your going to go sculpt, no poles and no tris, but I'm not sure a quad sphere is going to give you a nice crisp line. It will also put your seams in places that aren't really optimal for this kind of object.

I think a normal sphere with some additions would be fine. I mean there isn't much to normal map here other than the button. The normal map won't fake the indent that well at least not on the silhouetted edges, so he should model the indent, that leave just the button...


300-ish polys, could go lower or higher...

This gives you two hemispheres to unwrap and a strip around the middle. Very little stretching, UV seams here you have smoothing breaks, everyone wins?

That's my 2 cents.

Scizz

I dont quite get what your saying. I understand the quad sphere part, but are you saying to remodel my high poly?

If your wondering, this is how I made the original pokeball.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgt_H_be91o[/ame]

And also, after I tried the quad sphere idea for my low poly, for some reason I got this:

I think its because when I baked my textures, this black line actually appeared on them:

So I don't know, I'll keep trying.

Edit: I just read a message I got from Artifice that further explained what you said. I'll try that when I get home. Thank you = )

nicafornica

are you going to make a pokeman game??

Scizz

Ok. I don't know what to do. I unwrapped before the turbo smooth and now for some reason it wont even let me render to texture my high poly. My 3ds max just crashes. This shouldn't be that hard!!

Scizz

Alright I recorded the process of how I unwrapped my low poly and applied my texture on livestream:http://www.livestream.com/scizz/video?clipId=pla_b159d138-38bf-492b-94c7-1e9de464ec4c

I ended up with this:



And this is what I end up with in UDK:

Does anyone know why this is?? I feel like its just something I have to fix in photoshop.

Mark Dygert

1st off never trust what is displayed in the preview window,always use the actual files it outputs. I think that was part of your problem in earlier posts.

The latest issue seems to be insufficient edge padding, you can adjust this number up higher when baking. More than likely you're rendering at a really high resolution and UDK is capping it at 1024px and because there isn't enough padding the background is bleeding into usable/visible area.

The full solution is to use a more appropriate size, something 1024 or lower, and to always pad it because textures are always mip-mapped at some point and we always need to keep that in mind and make sure things look good at whatever level its set to.

Related links that explain it further:
http://wiki.polycount.com/EdgePadding
http://wiki.polycount.com/MipMap


.

Scizz

When I rendered the textures they were 512 x 512. It's in the video.

Mark Dygert

The mip map padding issue still applies and still is the main culprit at this point but there isn't much info to go off of. The normal map looks jacked up but then I only saw it for .01 sec and it was a blurry thumbnail... and you didn't crack open the normal map settings options box that I saw so still missing info.

It also looks like you had it set to output into the material instead of just rendering to files.

It also looks like you might of messed up the map setup in the 3pt shader but again, so small and blurry its hard to tell.

It would be easier if you posted the files or screen shots instead of 10min+ videos, after watching the mandatory commercial I only made it about 2min before I started skipping around and closed it. I tried making it through again on my lunch but its painfully long...

Scizz

Ok. Sorry about that. Here are my render settings and the result of my texture bakes.

Mark Dygert

Ok so first things first get rid of mental ray it creates more problems than it ever solves, like using the incorrect background color on normal maps. Really the only thing you should be using MR for is Ambient Occlusion. Scanline bakes faster more accurately.

2nd there just isn't much resolution to capture the detail. You can get around this by changing your UV layout and possibly your low poly object.

3rd if you're going to keep this layout and bump up the resolution to 1024 you would get better results (but that isn't really ideal you could map this with a 256 if you're smart about the UV layout. But as is, you should weld a lot of the seams.

You should also ditch the 3pt shader for this particular test. It's an awesome shader but it might be screwing you up.

Instead set up a standard material. That way when you export to .fbx and import into UDK you can import the material and you don't have to worry about setting it up. Also I'm not sure if you're using the 3pt shader correctly or not... Once you have the standard material applied and the normal map hooked up correctly it won't show up in the viewport you'll need to render it.

Scizz

Alright it looked like the mental ray was a lot of the problem. I took that off and tweaked some other settings and it got rid of all the weird black shit. This is the result in UDK


Also note that this item is going to be relatively small. About the size of a fist.

Now I circled the seams in black and some fuzzy lines as apposed to straight lines in green.

Black Lines: Is that seam problem just a matter of tweaking my texture or is that another error? Also, those seams were 10x more obvious before I removed the height map form the material that makes the poke ball.

Green Lines: Is that just because the quality I rendered out of 3ds Max (1024x1024) is too low? Or is that also just a matter of texture tweaking.

My new baked textures without mental ray:


If it looks like I'm just asking for answers instead of figuring it out myself I'm not. I'm also trying to figure things out and tweak them myself, sorry if this is getting annoying, this community is a great help though. = )

Ott

Look again. Pretty obvious why the green lines are jagged. Your textures are.



The black line is probably your lightmap. See how it looks with JUST shaded/lit mode and no textures applied.

Mark Dygert

Green line, you should straighten out your UV edges so it won't bake wavy.

Black line, could be a few different things, its hard to tell just what it is but you might need more padding.

Scizz

Alright I'm pretty much done, maybe I'll add some more detail but I'm tryin to move on.


The seams are pretty much hidden except from far distances which I'll fix some time later. The big ball is how its imported into UDK form Max(which I can adjust, just wasn't feelin' it at the time) but the smaller ones are the size of the actual prop, maybe even a bit smaller so a lot of detail isn't really necessary.

Is there anything you think I should fix right away that's completely obvious or do you guys think its good for now??