Seem placement options?
polycounter lvl 2
Hello I just unwrapped a model, how is this looking, circled red is symmetric.. can I overlap symmetrical parts? how close does the overlap need to be? is there a good method for overlapping? is there a good method for using up as much space on the texture map as possible? thanks!!
Replies
When you have a symmetrical mesh that you want textured symmetrically you overlap the UVs to effectively double your texel density. If you are baking, however, you need to temporarily offset your overlapping UVs out of 0-1 UV space to avoid Z-fighting and mesh centreline artifacts.
Unwrapping is an art in itself and really requires that you keep doing it until you get an efficient workflow in place. Most people hate it but I actually enjoy doing it. It's just like a puzzle.
As for packing, the best method is to do it manually. Even though packing algorithms have gotten smarter(dedicated tools like ipackthat) they are not smarter than a human brain. The most efficient way to pack is to do it yourself.
My approach to packing is like my approach to digital sculpting or hard-surface modeling: macro to micro.
Because the end goal is to 'tetris' multiple different shapes into a square, always think square as you pack.(unless you are authoring 2:1 textures, obviously) This way, as you get closer to the last remaining islands to pack, you should have an evenly spaced row of empty space along the side and top of the texture sheet which will allow you to scale up your islands at the end and gain an extra percentage of space used.
For hands/ legs for example it's hard to tell since they're separate from each other, but for a face you might see a line at the center of the face (not a seam line) and the skin pores mirrored from one side to another.
Other example would be a wrinkle on a clothes, it looks fake when the wrinkles perfectly mirrored from one side to the other.
For your question; are you mentioning about the face uv? no you didn't overlap the face, since left and right side of the face is occupying different coordinate in the uv space. If you want to overlap that, you'll end up with just half of the face appear on the uv.
I believe you're using Max right? you can try add a Symmetry modifier on your mesh and add an Unwrap UVW modifier again ontop of that, you'll see half of your uvs are not there, it's because they are flip and sit right ontop of it's other half and that's the overlapped uvs. Now you can scale up your uvs bigger and gain more density, but the catch is that you can't have a unique detail between left and right on those overlapped uvs.
This would be a good page to have bookmarked for your 3d modelling troubleshooting.
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Normal_Map_Modeling
I'll check that out, thanks.. btw I also look into my questions before asking them and normally I spend way too much time on trying to figure it out
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Texture_Baking