Like your concept interpretation also cool portfolio btw :+1: Nice to see a biased quad polygonal approach...nary a tri or ngon in sight and is this modeled in Softimage, too?
Not quite sure why you think there's a book worth of information to even learn about UV unwrapping. At its core, it's mapping 3D vertexes and polygons to a 2D coordinate system.
Would attaching the object to another mesh And then deleting the other meshs original polygons fix it? It'd break a morph target iirc so must affect vertex ordering somehow
That is a big improvement. I would add a little colour variation to the grass (dead patches etc) and some geo bricks to the edges of your walls so they are not so flat and polygonal.
I decided to go ahead and make the low polygon model. There seems to be some smoothing group issues, and possibly things about the topology I could fix. Any suggestions?
Is this meant to be for real time? If it is then you should consider how many polygons you are using for this model. Try taking it down to around 8-10,000 from 44,000 if you can.
With a shape like that it should be easy enough to line up one column of UVs then use the Polygons > Unfold tool (legacy setting) on the other side, it should straighten right out.
Break off the the polygons where just the text is and move it to another place on the UV map? http://vimeo.com/5821890 Slipgate does this on this character bust to give it a mole on one side.
Keep your polycount way lower until you nail the proportions, keep posting here and get feedback, then add polygons when your base shape is more solid.