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Pelt Mapping from an inner seam?

I've got an object that I'm trying to pelt map. It's got an outside seam and several holes within the main shape (which have seams). When I go to pelt it it tries to pelt from one of the inner holes instead of the main outer seam. How do I change this?

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  • gsokol
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    What program are you using? That will help a little bit.

    Make sure that you don't have pelt seams on the holes, only along the edge that you want to unwrap from.
  • Playdo
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    Max 2010. I did have seams on the holes, so I could expand the face selection to seams to split it off.

    I can't seem to remove the seams on the holes afterwards (shown in green). Edit seams + alt+click won't remove them. And if I planar map it, the green seams will still be there too. Any suggestions?
  • Mark Dygert
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    Pelt does a really bad job with object that have holes. Normally you can just cap off the holes and delete the geometry after you've unwrapped it.

    Most of the time I don't even mess with pelt, way too many steps and the results are roughly the same as, do a quick planar, break a few edges and relax. Or just as fast to quick planar a few sections and stitch and relax. For most things I'll normally do a cylinder map and relax.
  • disanski
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    disanski polycounter lvl 14
    Yeaa pelt is not going to work if you have holes on your mesh I don't think you can remove the pelt seam on the hole so you should try to use something else or cap the holes before you use the pelt method. ( I have not done that before, but you could probably delete the geometry you used to cap the holes after the uv mapping is done ) . You coul dalso simpy use the relax tool from the edit UVWs and manually move some verts to get the result you are after. May be if you show us a picture more people would be able to help.
    edit :- typing too slow again :0 , btw I asked the same question some time ago :)
  • gsokol
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    I don't think you can remove the pelt seam on the hole

    That is untrue. In the map parameters rollout, uncheck "show map seam," and only have "show seam" checked. Do you have any blue edges now? If not, you need to edit the seams for the pelt map. Enter edge mode for Edit UVWs, then select "Edit Seams" from the Map Parameters rollout. Then click the edges you want to be your pelt seams. This will make blue edges (unlike the green map seams) Make sure there are no blue edges on the holes of the mesh. When this is done, use pelt, and it will pelt from the blue seams, not the green map seams.

    This works for me every time.

    Here is an image showing what I did and the result. I hope this helps!

    PeltSeam_Example.jpg
  • disanski
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    disanski polycounter lvl 14
    Yes I did not try it before I write this and I was assuming it was like that. Sorry for misleading you and thank you for clearing this up :)
  • Playdo
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    I'll give Vig's suggestion a go. Gsokol, even after I remove the seams around the holes, so that I'm only left with a single outside blue seam, as soon as I select faces and pelt, the blue seams return to the holes and the pelt tries to pelt from an inner hole again.
  • gsokol
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    Disanski - no prob :)

    Playdo - Try doing Vig's suggestion if that works better for you. I think if you were to post a screenshot of what your seams look like before you do pelt, we could help...something sounds screwy with your process.
  • Mark Dygert
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    That's one of the things that bugs me about pelt, it always like to rotate pieces. To make it easy to paint on you'll have to rotate it back and align the edges.

    I would cylinder unwrap that. With the cylindrical button turned on you can move, scale and rotate the gizmo in the viewport which will update in the editor window. It has a green line that shows you where its going to cut and it should preview the seams.

    If the gizmo doesn't really align properly you should be able to get a quick fit by hitting Best Align then fit. When your happy with what you see, turn off cylindrical unwrap and you can go back to editing normally.
  • Playdo
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    Ok before you say my geometry is far too dense, I'll say why. There is embossed text on the inside of the shell, so I had to collapse my smooth down before I booleaned the text in. This is for close up photorealistic shots so I needed high smoothing.

    Ok my seams went all around the holes and the main seam went around the lip of the shell to separate the front from the back. I separated it off and then removed all the seams from the holes (not shown) so that I'm only left with a blue seam that goes around the lip. As mentioned, as soon as I pelt, the hole seams return and it pelts from the inner hole (shown).

    Pelt.jpg
  • Neox
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    Neox godlike master sticky
    do you have zbrush? would be a perfect mesh for UVmaster, you'll never get a mesh with that density and beeing very hardedged look good with pelt mapping, its just not meant for that
  • Mark Dygert
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    Oh that's the mesh, It looks like you have regular seams not blue pelt seams? Did you use "point to point seam" or "Edge Sel to Seams"?

    What happens when you select a face and click Exp. Face Sel to Seams, If it selects everything the blue seams are missing or there is a gap in the blue seam that needs to be sealed off.

    If it only picks things between the seams, you should be able to pelt.
  • Playdo
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    Neox: Don't know how to use it and don't have the time for it if there's a different way (hopefully).

    Vig: I set them up as pelt seams. I should have shown the screen shot with all blue seams. If I select face and exp. face sel to seams, it selects the faces on the back of the shell as expected. If I pelt from that it does as shown above.

    If I then remove the blue pelt seams around the holes so that I'm only left with the blue lip seam, and then select all the faces (on the back of the shell) in the UVW window, and then pelt it does the same as above.

    Edit: I used Edge Sel To Seams
  • Mark Dygert
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    Yea Neox brings up a good idea, trying out UV master with its suggestive paint seams might do it better.
  • SpeCter
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    SpeCter polycounter lvl 14
    There is not much you need to know, just paint where you want seams and paint where you don´t want them, there is a mini tutorial/demonstration on the pixologic website which shows how to use it.
  • Playdo
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    I would but I need to have this finished tomorrow + there's no Z-brush on the machine.

    Ok I got the map flattened out pretty well I think, a small bit of edge clean up needed in the corner. I've been playing about with the relaxing for the last hour or so and not getting the best results. Can someone tell me the best way to relax :) (I need it:)).

    Should I be relaxing by center and keeping the boundary and outer corners fixed? How do I get the ouside shape (silhouette) to be optimised and then the inner holes too? Please be specific. Thanks

    uvw.jpg
  • Neox
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    Neox godlike master sticky
    Playdo wrote: »
    Neox: Don't know how to use it and don't have the time for it if there's a different way (hopefully).

    nothing to know there (ok you don't have z thats another point) but you just import your mesh, set uv master to use existing uv seams, click unwrap - unwrap done takes less then a second on such a simple mesh, you could send me a copy over and i slap it through uvmaster so you can see how well it will handle that asset :)

    btw don't you have a basemesh you used to create this? if so why didn't you unwrap that?
  • Playdo
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    I'd love to send you a copy but it really wouldn't go down well.

    I do have a base mesh but it doesn't contain the embossed text on the inside of the case, so the geometry on one side is different. It's only the outer geometry that I need to be cleanly uv'd though - so could I still use the base mesh of the textless model for the model with text?
  • Mark Dygert
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    You can select a few verts, turn on "Soft Select" (lower right) in the editor window and relax a selection, that normally works best to fix trouble areas rather than trying to relax the whole thing.

    It might also help to break a few edges diagonally through the corner (from the corner toward the center, but not too far in), relax then stitch it back together.

    Any plans to down-res it and use floating text? Or maybe subdivide that area locally instead of the whole thing?

    Graphite modeling tools has a handy dot ring, dot loop function that helps you select every other edge then its a quick ctrl-remove and half the edges disappear. I agree with Neox it would be much easier to unwrap a lower poly version but for whatever reason if you're stuck try the stuff above.
  • Playdo
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    Thanks for all the suggestions. I ended up using the unsmoothed version, which unwrapped fine, and a bump map for the text. Not a perfect solution but it looks ok. I tried using a displacement map for the text (made in illustrator, then imported to PS and saved as a PSD without converting) but the edges of the text came out soft - not sure why.

    I didn't know that you could float embossed geometry. I take it there's just a hole behind the floating geo and then the surfaces are just aligned?
  • Mark Dygert
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    If you have to create a hole, that can work but normally just floating it works out pretty well.

    EmbossedText.jpg
  • Playdo
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    Cool. I thought it would be easily noticeable if the top of the text geometry is raised higher than the main geometry. I don't see how it wouldn't be from certain angles though. I'll try it out.
  • Mark Dygert
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    Yea most of the time it works best from straight on but depending on the depth needed it can hold up pretty well from a lot of angles.

    You can get some weird shadow issues. Mostly people use this method when baking textures, the angle is almost always straight on so it renders flat. When you bake AO you end up doing two passes sometimes because of the funky shadows. Normal maps don't take shadows into account, only depth and it actually sees the surfaces as perfectly flat unless the edges have a bit of a slope.

    ProjectionMissedRays.jpg
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