There are scripts (or feature included by default in some softare), make different UV islands from hard edge or smoothing groups with 1 click. Like "flatten by smoothing groups" in 3ds max. It's faster than manually splitting edges (only on cylinders need to split, because they're 1 smoothing group)
@Voxelope thanks man I just saw this and it made my day. Just like you and your wife I actually work with kids with autism so that really made me smile. I also plan on putting a pattern on the cape but later on in the story this is just a default/starter cape XD.
The unwrap seams you suggest are fine! I would advise not using the default day time/night time stuff that UDK give you as your stuff will look really washed out. I learnt the hard way. Also, nice hotkey. "Shift+N to select none" as this dino is bluuue
I'm having problems with lightmaps too... I found this tutorial on Reddit, he explains how there's this 1 pixel padding default thing going on.... Here he explains what's happening: http://www.reddit.com/r/UE4Devs/comments/246whl/the_most_important_thing_about_lightmaps/ Let us know if this fixes your lightmapping whoes.
kite212: I'll try to make the fur bigger. Polarbear: It's a wolf head. I'm not trying to copy that style. If you look at the default models of the lone druid and his spirit bear I would prefer my stuff to follow more inline with that. But I think I do need a better silhouette.
When you subdivide your plane turn off Smoothing the "Smt" button next to Divide. You can also crease the edges of your plane, the default Plane3D in does this, but the corners will still round off a little. Either way it prevents the open edges from shrinking in size as you subdivide it.
thanks for the tips Bigtimemaster. For now, I have just made it again on a default avatar and i'll just have to re-adjust it to fit the form of my model. Im just wondering what is making it happen and how to stop it in general. The mesh in the vewport is one of my highpoly subtools from zbrush.
Hi, me again. For some reason it's done it again.. I followed your previous advice and it hasn't changed anything. Am I doing it wrong? Did the Assign Controller thing on the right and changed it from the default to something else and back again, but this hasn't made a difference. Many thanks! - JB
The examples you shows are fully textured. You won't be able to get that level of render with default Lambert material. What you can possibly do is ambient occlusion render, or pure white material with HDRI light. You'll get something like this. http://linamsc.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/bootsstudio_ao_ver04.png
You should create a default Decal UV layout, to which you try to conform all cars and all decals, that way you don't need to create a new unwrap for every decal, which sounds like a bad idea (too much work, impossible due to max 4 UV's).