UV mapping methods

i presume your talking Max here but its allways good to let people know before hand (and what ver).

I usually use a combination of planar, cylindrical, sphere & box. But basically the same process as what you said. Sometimes it pays to just use the flatten mapping function, and just weld the faces back together, you do get a really nice flat base to start with, especially for low poly characters, it works like a charm, you can get a sub 1500 tri character unwrapped and ready to paint in about 45 minutes.

You do get faster and faster at doing it, a 3000 - 5000 tri model depending on complexity usually takes around 3 - 4 hours for a good unwrap.

Using the Planar map method, how do you know which faces you have unwrapped and which you haven't? Also when you are doing the face, do you planar map the whole thing, or dou you do the nose seperatly and weld it one to the face.

erm im assuming from whats been said here that you can do large planar maps (me = maya user), and bullet asked how you know what youve unwrapped heres a handy hint:

before you start laying out your faces all nice and flat select all the faces on the entire object and do a big planar map of them (what youll get is a sort of orthographic view of your character in your UV edit window) which you can move off to the side. Then when you map out certain parts they will disapear from that large map. This also means if you have mapped out the arm and what to map out the hand for example, assuming the model is fairly simple you could just marquee select the hand from the large planar map you made at the start (because youve allready mapped the arm it wont be on the planar map anymore and thus its an easy marquee). Also if theres any floating faces on your original projection, you know youve missed something and you can check to see where they came from :D

i hope my jargon made sense there :P if not say so and ill try to provide some visual aid.

Bullet21 - Make a checkerboard material, and apply that to your model before you start, youll notice that the checkers are all screwed up when you first apply it, the goal of the unwrap is to get those checkers looking like checkers again.

I recall, I was going to write you a tut on this wasn't I ? [:I]

whilst on this topic... anyone know how to set the canvas ratio? It's always sqaure... which means if I use a 512x256 texture map, I need to squash my UV's into Max's square UV canvas, then export as a 2:1 ratio. Anyway to actually work on a canvas other than a square one?

Yeah hazard you were, get to work, it's not like you work for kalesceent studios and are so busy doing other stuff ;P

Using the unwrap modifier in Max I either just do planar maps or use the unwrap tool.
Maya has great uvw mapping, mmmm relax tool.

max 6 has relax UV's :)

personally i cant use relax UVs because if i do, i dont know whats going where when i take it into photoshop.

Max 6 has relax uv's?!! I didn't even check!!! lol
My work just sped up, yoink!

Another question, sorry about the flooding guys, but texturing is the part i'm having heaps of difficulty with. If i have a symmetrical model, is it possible to unwrap just one half and then mirror the texture to the other side as well, or is there some other way to half the work. Or do you simply have to unwrap it all?

UV mapping - at the moment I am using lightwave 7 to map objects, very easy and quick, when you get the hang of it, you are able to scew and magnify to your hearts content, which makes it easy to export to a map out of ratio, honestly i haven't used any other UV tools, but I found it easy to pick up and can be quite powerful.

quote:Originally posted by bullet21

If i have a symmetrical model, is it possible to unwrap just one half and then mirror the texture to the other side as well

The easiest way is to delete half the model, unwrap it... mirror it and weld it back as 1 piece. Max's "Copy/Paste" of UV's is atrocious, in my experience.

And yeh... does anyone know how to use a non-square canvas to unwrap the UV's on?

quote:Originally posted by Makk

I have been doing some UV mapping mapping recently and I am curious as to know what methods other people use.
At the moment I just use the Unwrap UV modifer, select a group of faces, planer map, adjust, select more faces, planer map, weld onto the previous set of faces, adjust, etc, etc
However this has proven to be painfully slow and boring. I cant imagine how long it would take to map a high 10k model using this method!!!
Does anyone use the UVW map modifer and use the gizmo for doing cyndrical mapping? Whats that like? Is it quicker/easier then planer mappping?
Any and all advice on dealing with UV mapping and would be great :)

I'm guessing you're using Max 4 or 4.2? Like J.I Styles mentioned somewhere else, there are plugins to get some of Max 5 unwrapping features in Max 4.2..

If you have time, you might want to check out the Max 6 30 day trial. Unwrapping has pretty much become an automatic procedure with a few mouse clicks and some value adjustments with Max, which is great!

Yeah, i found that plug in on the AIE website. You have to become a member which is free then, go to the plug ins section.

quote:whilst on this topic... anyone know how to set the canvas ratio? It's always sqaure... which means if I use a 512x256 texture map, I need to squash my UV's into Max's square UV canvas, then export as a 2:1 ratio. Anyway to actually work on a canvas other than a square one?

Click more options, and in bitmap options untick use custom bitmap size [;)]and there u go not square and all squished up now...yah

Has anyone know of a program called Depp UV, and know what it does, i just downloaded a video tutorial and the guy in it (ben Mathis) says it makes unwrapping a lot easier.

Sorry for the late reply, ISP problems. Yeah, Im stuck in the stone age with MAX 4.0.
Whats the plugin to get better mapping tools?
I hate trying to figure all the jumbled lines. I guess that comes with practice.
Might give that MAX6 30 day trial a go. Maybe even just for the sumea modeller challenge!!
Bullet I have edged faces on so it highlights the select faces in the viewport.

http://www.aie.vic.edu.au/3d_resources/plugin/unrapper.zip is the link for unrapper, it's makes things easier but still a pain in the anus.

Hey guys, have another question, when i run an STL check, with everything selected in the dialogue box it high lights a few edges, i tried all of the errors idividually but, the errors appear when i select open Edges. What's this mean and how can i fix it.