UV Maps and Texturing are my Bane
polycounter lvl 6
Hey guys. I love 3d modeling. It's so natural having came from a painting background already. There's just one little thing I don't like about it.
Unwrapping UVs. Because of them, painting in Photoshop is a nightmare most of the time because something is off in the model to make them distort. I can never get a 1:1 detail, even if I give a specific block of triangles enough UV space. I need to know the art of UV wrapping or else I don't think I can ever come to love 3D.
Unwrapping UVs. Because of them, painting in Photoshop is a nightmare most of the time because something is off in the model to make them distort. I can never get a 1:1 detail, even if I give a specific block of triangles enough UV space. I need to know the art of UV wrapping or else I don't think I can ever come to love 3D.
Replies
What software are u using to unwrap?
What way are u unwrapping now?
Do you have any examples of what is going wrong?
@dustin: Thank you for the recommendations. I'll make sure to look into each, though I have already seen the Digital tutor videos.
Costs a few bucks but is money well spent. Makes the unwrapping so much easier, more intuitive and time saving.
I also recommend you get tex tools so you can normalize your uv islands (get even pixel density across the whole model).
Also make it a habbit to straighten wavy loops/edges. Makes it easier to texture and you'll have less troubles to get clean normal maps. For instance the two islands on the bottom of your map i would probably rectify completely.
Thers scripts and whatnot for it but i don't want to confuse you too much for starters. You can just use the standard 3dmax uvmapping tools. Use edge mode selection. Select an edge. Pushsh the loop button (and then the ring button if you want to straighten multiple loops at once) and to the left you have some buttons with arrows. Use either the align horizontal or align vertical button depending on which direction you want to straighten your loops/edges out.
There will be some minor stretching from the straightening but the pros far outweight the cons imo.
like one of these
http://wiki.polycount.com/TextureCoordinates#UV_Map_Grids
this way as you UV map your models, you can see right in the view-port, how things are distorting. Grid textures make distortion very obvious and easy to find and fix.
The more an more, people paint in a 3d software like zbrush, which get rid of distortion and seams annoyance, and use photoshop for color correction, overlaying, fine tuning...
Some advices though.
Avoid having faces with 5 edges or more. You exporter/engine will triangulate this in a manner you don't want. Better triangulate that manually + the relax unwrap doesn't like those kind of faces. So quad or tris on a low poly is a good habit.
You have a bit of wasted space, you can certainly do that better,e venthough, you should always keep a bit of space between shells (see mipmapping in the wiki)
Use the relax tool. Also for such low poly, you could alson straighten some parts (arms?) to gain a bit of resolution here.
If your texture is symmetrical, only unwrap half of the model, symmetry your mesh so the uv gets overlapped. You don't need to paint twice the same thing + spares texture space.
Keep in mind that you will always have distotion unless you unwrap a cube. You just want to minimize it so the texture doesn't stretch badly, and have enough resolution to paint on.
I agree that you should know the tool that comes with your package before using a 3rd plugins/soft.