[Colonol Dekker]

I seriously don't get on with it.
 
I can handle the easier stuff like low poly fighters but my better models which are still buried on cd backups will probably never see the light of day because I lose all motivation an hour into trying to get at least a section of the map done. I've been modelling since 00 making all sorts of crap for retail. Tile mapped ugly crap in Truespace 2.1 to be honest. But my modelling improved. I got better programs. But UV mapping remains my downfall.
 
Up until recently my prog of choice (the prog I get least with I should say) is lithunwrap or lithium unwrapper. I'm trying to get my head around Daz3D's Cararra pro 7. Which I got free from a magazine.
What I normally try is to unwrap to a basic shape and then take it further. . . . 
 
What i'm rather poorly trying to say is, all you Diaspora and FOTG and MediaVP contributors, give me your collective advice and thoughts on this one process.
 
UV mapping!
Recommended methods, tips and the like.

[pecenipicek]

UVmapping is a ***** that takes a long long loooooong time to get right, and even then its an utterly terribly boringly time-consuming process that'll make you weep a lot. This is from a modeller with approx 6 years of experience with modelling and approx 2 years of attemps to UVmap anything... (note, attempts. i never managed to unwrap something so its actually useable to draw crap)

[ktistai228]

do some paper modeling (the thing were you take the "UV map" with the texture on it, print it and make it into 3d. It helps you to understand the basics!

[Colonol Dekker]

I understand the basics. I understand the concept.
 
I require guidance in not hating it. Crave wisdom in honeing what are in essence meagre skills.

[pecenipicek]

what ktistai228 said then. get pepakura for that too. it basically allows you to cut up your models for such things

[Spoon]

Welcome to the club

[Col. Fishguts]

Personally I always find making textures much harder and time consuming than UV mapping. As pecenipicek noted it can be very boring, but for me it's usually something that I sit down with a big mug of coffee, put on some atmospheric music and get it over with.
What I have found is that for tricky parts, it's usually useless to just start, as it leads to nothing. Instead you have to unwrap it first completely in your head (that's the paper model approach the others already explained). That requires some practice and some 3d visualization skill, but once you know how the result should look, implementation is much easier.
Also, it helps a lot if you already have some ideas how the texture should apply to the model (which parts share the same UV space, which parts need their own UV space), otherwise texturing becomes a PITA.

My general approach:

- Divide&Conquer: start with the big parts, then work your way through the smaller details one at a time.
- Select a face (or group of faces for more complex models) and do a "map-planar-to-face" (that's the most important feature for me that's missing in Lith), join the planar mapped parts together manually after wards, preferably joint them in the same place where they are also geometrically connected. This is the step where you scale the parts correctly to each other. Rinse&repeat for the whole model.
- Scale the joined parts to each other and try to fill up the available UV space as efficiently as possible.

But it's hard to give guidance to UV mapping in text... so why don't you post one of your models and we can explain the finer arts on a real example.

[Rodo]

UV'ing is incredibly annoying.

but you gotta do what you gotta do, right?

I have only uv'd one model so far (you've seen it dek and it sucks) so I can't say I'm an expert.

Personally I like doing the uv this way:

grab a chunk of faces that have no visible change of orientation (they face the same direction) then I apply seems on it.
then I uv those faces and see if I get a somewhat plane surface, when I get that I stop with those faces and go looking for other chunk of faces elsewhere.

After the hole model is uv'd I grab all the islands and I start joining/ aligning verts in the uv map selector.

I only know how to use the mapping method, no experience in tiled UV'ing.


STILL... I'm looking forward for more experienced modelers to come around and toss some tips for the crowd.
I'll be keeping my eyes on this thread.

[Colonol Dekker]

Ok, heres a collection of various assorted stuff.

What i'm most miffed about is not being able to get my cdcruise exatly how i like it.........


I want it in-game

Some of my older fighters are done well considering my innate hate of doing it.



Rodo, yeah i started out with that too. IPAndrews old tut got me started but once i hit the £OHMYGOD I CAN MODEL OVER 10k POLYS!"£ thresh-hold i began to get a bit 


EDIT- for your convenience................ NO COBS in the archive. ewither 3ds or obj.

[attachment deleted by ninja]

[Hellstryker]

Fishguts speaks the troof. Music helps, caffeine helps. Also refer to Galemp's sig.

[Vasudan Admiral]

I reckon the difficulties you sound like you're facing in lithunwrap are actually purely because of the toolset available and the clunky interface in lithunwrap - not cos of any inability on your part. I used lith for years not knowing any better, and yeah UV mapping was perpetually a HORRIBLE process and got more and more horrible as my shapes got more complex.

Eventually Water pointed out to me that Blender actually had a very good UV mapping suite built in. I took a bit of convincing to give it a solid go (simply cos until that point I had ONLY used blender for mesh construction), but once I did I completely abandoned Lith. Blender's tools are both easier to use than Liths AND far more flexible. UV mapping is now very easy, but can still be a bit time consuming depending on just how pedantic I want to be (which is usually... quite :\ ).

The process consists of:
1) Selecting the face or faces to UV using whatever selection tools you like (as in tools like: select all linked faces, select all linked co-planar faces with an angle tolerance, select all similar to current selection (based on size, direction etc) - and a few other neat tools like increment selection which adds all faces touching the currently selected faces to the selection)

2a) Pressing unwrap to auto-unwrap it's UVs. You might need to select some key edges and mark them as seams to get it to unwrap correctly.

OR

2b) Orientating the camera so it's facing the selected faces straight on (there's a tool to quickly and precisely do that too), project the selected faces from the current view onto the UV plane.

3) Scale and arrange the UV 'islands' to maximise texture space usage. (there are tools to do this automatically too!)

Not saying you SHOULD switch to blender (though....you still should! ) but the point is that other apps do exist that have much better toolsets than lith and ESPECIALLY TS. (I don't think I'd even count TS as having a UV toolset. It more has a lone rusty bent screwdriver made of cheese, and pretends it's a full on CNC machining workshop.)

[Nuke]

in truespace i used different materials for different mapping areas, this made them easy to select. in max i used smooth groups for the same purpose. i also dont bother to scale the projected sections until all the projections are complete. i dont try to fill the square with sections as i map them. this allows me to achieve better proportions and to use as much of the map space as possible. also you dont have the annoying problem of running out of uv space before you run out of polygons. i also do a touchup pass where i apply a checker pattern and adjust individual verts until all the squares look square, it also allows you to gauge proportions. once im happy with everything il cram it all into the square.

[Rodo]

3) Scale and arrange the UV 'islands' to maximise texture space usage. (there are tools to do this automatically too!)

can you provide me the shortcut to this automatic arrange tool please, pretty please??

[Colonol Dekker]

I reckon the difficulties you sound like you're facing in lithunwrap are actually purely because of the toolset available and the clunky interface in lithunwrap - not cos of any inability on your part. I used lith for years not knowing any better, and yeah UV mapping was perpetually a HORRIBLE process and got more and more horrible as my shapes got more complex.

Good to know that it's not just me then

Not saying you SHOULD switch to blender (though....you still should! ) but the point is that other apps do exist that have much better toolsets than lith and ESPECIALLY TS. (I don't think I'd even count TS as having a UV toolset. It more has a lone rusty bent screwdriver made of cheese, and pretends it's a full on CNC machining workshop.)

I agree completely, when 5.1 came out for free and i got "GASP" Cube mapping i nearly fainted.

[JGZinv]

Go check out some tuts in the section here at the board.

Might look into Bodypaint 3D, they have a different system for dealing with models
for more visual people.

[pecenipicek]

Go check out some tuts in the section here at the board.

Might look into Bodypaint 3D, they have a different system for dealing with models
for more visual people.

i'm using it. it comes with Cinema4D nowadays.


not a fun experience.

[Colonol Dekker]

Ok, fess up.


Who's got my fresh steaming dump, but hasn't passed judement on the mapping?

[Col. Fishguts]

I had a look at the cdcruis... but the geometry is a mess (maybe the export to 3ds is to blame) and the mapping is only halfway done I presume.

Any of the other models you want us to have a closer look at?

EDIT: Ok, so the the gbomb seems to have the cleanest geometry and you did a simple box-mapping on that one. So if you don't mind I'm gonna have a crack at it, give it a proper UV layout, and then report back here with the results.

[Scooby_Doo]

UVmapping is one of the easier things to do (compared with coming up with ideas LOL)

Divide and conquer is my main trick... also even though you can't use symmetry for your final model (due to normal map issues) you can use it to do both sides of the model at once then simply move on side away from the other, flip and connect the two and vola.

Also does lithunwrap do unwrapping based on angle?  For instance in Max by default it will connect all polygons provided they're within 45 degree angle of each other.

Rounded corners are my worst problem

[Vasudan Admiral]

can you provide me the shortcut to this automatic arrange tool please, pretty please??

UV editor pane -> UVs -> Average Island Scale (Ctrl A) will scale all the various islands to be the same 'resolution' - so big polygons in the model will take up much more room than small polys. This avoids all the issues with some parts being blurry while others are sharp.

For the auto arrangement, it's called Pack Islands from the same menu (Ctrl P). Be aware though that if you have say, 2 identical polys that you want to use the same part of the texture, pack islands doesn't appear to pay any attention. It thinks there should be no UV overlap and so separates them out. Handy in some cases, not so much in others. Not sure if that's any different in 2.5. I should check.