Forum: Carrara


Subject: UV tutorials and hints

photojoe opened this issue on Feb 11, 2012 · 2 posts


photojoe posted Sat, 11 February 2012 at 6:34 AM

I've found basic UV tutorials, but nothing that covers unwrapping to any extent and more so on complex objects like the organic forms (not just figures, but clothing, helmets, and other organic forms) for where to put the seams. I hear it's an art more then a science, but some general guides would help. Such as is planar the one I should use or does is very from what part of the organic form to the next and can use map each section of the mesh with a different projection?

Recently I got my hands on the Quarian Alien from Rowoss and after skinning her with bones, found her textures were a little skewed on import as an OBJ.

So I started trying to remap her, only to have a fit. I did notice the eyelashes were mapped seperately (I'm going to go on a limb and say they are broken off as a seperate object).

Is detaching the polygons a solution, however when I do it, when unwrapping the mesh is still joined together even though the manual says when you detach polys they are now treated as seperate from the rest of the mesh.

Things learned so far:

Turn OFF SMOOTHING.

Trying to put seams where they are hidden by humanoid form is trickier then it looks.

I can see why in a pro enviroment there model painters (who do the UV maps and the textures) are so specialized.

Thanks,

Joe


MarkBremmer posted Sat, 11 February 2012 at 10:26 AM

On organic shapes, UV mapping is a bit of work. In the tutorial series I created, I covered UVs and unwraps plus a bunch of other tricks. 

The UV unwrap will do everything at once, repositioning content as if it's still attached, and won't individually remap areas that have had the polygon detach done to them. The detach feature, instead, allows you to grab the polygons and manually reorient them. (make sure you save the polygons with a selection name so you can use the "select by name" function) This way, to be simple, if you had a cowboy had, you could manually select the brim and to a parametric display for that, and on the same UV sheet, then do a cylinder wrap/display for the  part of the hat that is left. 

Clear as mud?