UV distortion and strange overlapping in Maya

e-barron

So i am working in a simple project just to practice a little bit of modeling and mapping. Well i am making a tank inspired in the art of the great Nick Carver ---> http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-diIB1ZHP2E4/TdaIpOUq3nI/AAAAAAAAAm4/toSq7P08XsQ/s1600/goodbot1.jpg

BIG EDIT: THE DISTORTION WAS BEING CAUSED BY THE SAME GEOMETRY IT LOOKS LIKE I HAD DUPLICATED EDGES AND VERTS I VE REDONE THE ENTIRE GEO... CLOSING THOUGHTS: IT'S GOOD TO CHECK YOUR GEOMETRY IF THERE'S A UV PROBLEM

Well first i add this image of the base geometry of the canon model-->



Since i am new to texturing rapidly i got myself stucked. So here i am using a “Cylindrical Map” and this is the default UV map that it generates me. Notice the purple shade, is it purple because the faces are perpendicular to the edges? Also note the distortion that it generates using this kind of mapping, is this normal to this kind of geometry? I ask this because when i modifiend the geometry of the higlithed part by aproximating it to a cylinder shape the distortion decreased.


So well, i played a bit with the map and got this-->




So i found some UVs hidden and moved them (those would be the purple shades). Notice the equivalent faces and the distortion in the parts of the rings. Don't accepting defeat i tried to map the canon in different ways but those purple shades gave me problems (non desired overlapping).

and lastly here is a result of working with the distorted map



That's why i come here and ask for ur help guys please please, How can i eliminate the distortion?:(, thx a lot in advance:):):)

bk3d

blue shaded uv's mean they are mapped non mirrored.. red shading means they are mirrored. when you get purple that means you have mirrored uv's overlapping non mirrored uv's. When you get darker blue's means you have overlapping UV's. The texture stretching is due to the fact that you have straight uv's on a non straigt surface. That amount of stretching might not be too bad depending on how close you get to that object. if you dont want any stretching.. you will have to add a planar map to the rings.