Using Edit Mesh/Poly modifier when unwrapping
polycounter lvl 18
I had an idea recently to use an edit mesh/poly modifier on top of the actual edit mesh/poly when mapping a model. I was hoping that using the second edit mesh that I could move the polys about to make them easier to map, practically break up the model and flatten it and then just use a planer map. Then by deleting the second edit mesh, all the alterations done to map it would be undone, and you'd be left with a nicely mapped model. Well, that's what I was hoping anyway. Any idea if it's possible to do this?
Replies
(as detaching a face actually seems to detach a copy of the model...weird)...
This is how the stack should look to get it to work:
Edit Poly>Edit Poly modifier>UVW Mapping>UVW unwrap
when you're done unwrapping...delete the Epoly modifier and you'll be left with your UVW map...
DO NOT COLLAPSE THE STACK! Just right click and delete just the Epoly modifier...then collapse the stack.
I tried this out on a simple cube and it works...
Hmm, is there a way to break it up and keep the polys connected? Like with the box, if you select one vertex and hit break it breaks it up into each face, and then you have to move the verticies around and weld the verticies together so you have squares instead of triangles. Would be easier if it only broke up the polys and not every face. But this is with edit mesh, I tried to see if edit poly would behave differently, but I have Gmax and I'm not seeing an edit poly modifier. I can convert it to editable poly, but I'm not seeing an edit poly modifier, does Gmax have an edit poly modifier? If not, then does someone with Max know if edit poly, or maybe doing it differently with edit mesh allows you to keep the polys together and not have it broken up into individual faces?
Paul Steed wrote about this approach in his (older) book "Character Modeling in 3ds Max". Seems like a good approach, but I just got used to moving the verts around in the UVW Unwrap editor. Same thing in the end.
use that technique, it's way faster, like Ryno says. learn it and love it - Steed's technique is about 3 years out of date now... there should be an addendum added to that book saying "btw this is old"
I tried it once, but it has it's own issues. I can dig up the video tutorial on it if anyone's interested. I guess I'm just too old and set in my ways to try all these new fangled skinning techniques. The old fashioned UnwrapUVW editor still does it for me, especially with some of the new tools they added in 6 & 7.
FarAssasin, did you get that technique from Mike Janov, the Discreet demo artist? I saw him demo that too, but must say that it looks like a real pain in the butt breaking all of those vertices, the way he was doing it. It looked like a neat trick, but unless I completely missed something, I'm sure that you could get results just as good in a lot less time just using Unwrap.
To me it just seems odd that people come up with these bizarre gimicky work-arounds for getting UVs laid out, when Unwrap was designed specifically to do this task.
So I was thinking that maybe modifying the mesh to better fit a plane or a cylinder would result in a better mapping by UVW Map and I wouldn't need to mess with Unwrap UVW as much. Although in some cases so far it hasn't been helping much as the modified mesh for mapping doesn't really match the original mesh to well and still requires quite a bit of work in Unwrap UVW.
Wow Per, "Click a few buttons and you're done"? How do you do that? I'm guessing that there's a lot of tools or scripts that I know nothing about, haven't even tried Max 7 yet. So if anyone has some suggestions on better methods or have some fancy tools I would REALLY appreciate it.
also www.chuggnut.com - go to the Scripts section of that site, get the Unwrap UI script. It adds a load of useful buttons to the side of the Unwrap UVW window.
Per: Lemme know when you've finished that script, so I can BURGLE YOUR COMPUTER
Before:
After:
I made the model in Gmax, so I had to export it to get it into Max, which for some reason all the verticies became unwelded. So I welded all the verticies in both the model and the map, then ran the script. Somehow I don't think it's supposed to make it worse, but I can't think of what would have caused that.
anyway, the way you have that mapped at the moment is kinda weird, i'd separate off the horns to be mapped separately, it will make it easier to lay out without having to rotate other bits to fit around the strange shape of the head as it is mapped now.
the seams wouldn't really be a problem since they'd be at a place where the geometry goes through a 90degree angle change, so you probably wouldn't notice minor continuity errors on the texture.
just my thoughts there, you can uv-map however you want
Yea, I'm probably gonna go back and remap the head, I just did a real quick and dirty mapping just to see how well the uvHelp script would work.
You're best bet is to apply a planar map to smaller, seperate sections of the model and then see if uvhelp helps.
it's been pretty good with organic objects for me ... you've just gotta be careful where you put your seams really. think about how it will unwrap the section. it's not the be-all and end-all, but it's getting close
[Per128] I'm putting together a script that will let you indicate where you want the seams and everything is automated from there.
[/ QUOTE ]
I'm interested in this. Do let us know when/if it's ready.