AlphaFlyte - May - Texturing
 

ok shame on me for poor show last 2 challenges, but real life (insert favourite curses here). Technically I am way in over my head here, but isn't that what challenges are all about? I really need to learn how to do this :)
First of all, thanks Mike for providing these models. What a great insight it's been just studying them.

Meet Calamity retro beachbabe Jane. A James Bond-esque girl if you will. Only small modifications to give her feminine, retro (graphic design) features. Not done with the modifications yet but it's late and out of time. Won't be that much mods anyhow.


Personal goal:
1. To learn UV mapping basics, onto good and efficient layout.
2. To understand how to technically attack such a thing as hair.

Project goal:
1. To handpaint all textures. No fancy bells and whistles materials.
2. Make it obviously different from Mike's wonderful finished model.
3. Attack it as if it was a game model. Use the geometry that's there and somehow make it look like there's more geo than it really is. If that makes sense.

Here's the quick start.

Good luck to you; if you need anything, I'll be willing to lend whatever advice I can. :D

Thanks buddy, much appreciated and it will come in handy. This is unknown space.

ok what I've done is played a little more with the model, but no point in showing the minor modifications here. I have to chart my course too as time is precious. Let's focus on what's important. UV'ing and texturing and finish something.

1. I've separated the head, hair, hat, and details (glasses, props) into separate display layers. This was a good idea.

2. I've cut the head in half down the centerline which is also a good idea.

3. I attack the UVing of the head with an automatic map, followed by an Unfold UV's. A not so good idea.

This is the starting point, which is to my untrained eye looks OK, but it's clear that alot of manual moving and sewing and repositioning cv's and it shows another potential problem for painting it. Things aren't very straight or logical. The nose section is almost in a 45 degree diagonal. It'll be very hard to paint with any precission.



I'll restart and try a z-axis planar map for the front of the face. I'm not sure how to attack the side or back of the head yet, but that's part of the exploration fun.

I have a question on scale for the projections as well. Is this important at the initial stage for a game model as opposed to say an architectural piece where scale would be extremely important. Would any part of the layout be dominant over the other? Given I stay within 0-1 space and use as much of it as possible.

Tried a cylindrical map with the horizontal sweep set to 360. This method does not seem to work well on heads cut in half with 360 sweeps nor 180's.

The square distribution seems ok for the face and head, but strange things start to happen at the neck.

Also the mouth area becomes problematic and very overcrowded no matter what I do. How would you approach the mouth area so that its easy to paint and distinguish what are the outside lips, and the inside mouth without everything being ontop of one another in the UV map?

Geez, 4am. nn folks.

to answer your scale question, you definitely want to give the face a bit higher scale then your average mesh and you want to give the eyes a lot too, compared to their size, just because its the main focus of the character usually.

For mapping things like the mouth, you'd need to get in there and untangle it one point at a time, no projection is really going to cut it right out of the box. I'd also recomend not having the face split down the middle like that. you want your texture seams to be put in as nondescript places as possible, so the back of the head would be better. Check out the sample face texture I have in my portfolio to get an idea what I mean. (link in sig)

Oh thanks Mike. Makes very good sense. I'll give the cylindrical approach one more go by cutting the UV seem above, down the middle and shift the half of the faces for a better seem. It helped a lot looking at your texture.
On dominant areas, basic artistic principles on draw attention to the face and eyes applies to UV mapping as well? That was an eye opener. No pun intended. More UV space equals more texture resolution I take it, but won't things start to stretch out of control?

I followed Serverinianthony's recommendation to UV map a simple cube, and shoosh was that helpful. From this it became clear that planar maps are very easy to work with, I learned about projection height and projection width to unify scale and control the coverage with it.

Flip UV's also became integral on some of the faces. If you have numbers on the UV checker you'll instantly see that some of the numbers are showing backwards. A simple flip UVs for that face takes care of it. Very neat that you can flip both horizontal and vertical.

Who knew UV mapping was so much fun :)

Don't re-UV the head!

Select the edges that make up the back of the head (mid-spine), and in the UV window, use the cut button (the icon with the pair of scissors). Then select one UV on one half of the head, select the shell (Select -> Select Shell), move the UV's around as a whole, and move the two halves of the face close together. Then select all the UV's that make up the center of the face, and sew them (the icon with the blue-colored stretch of tape).

Hope you read this before you re-UV...XD

I won't re-UV just yet hehe. Still would like to explore this cylindrical map route a bit further.

Major breakthrough, well for me at least. I am in the process of untangling overlapping UV points in space. It's my understanding that no area can overlap the other unless of course you want to share the same texture space (planks on a fence for instance).

I realized the whole face does not have to be one shell, so I am starting to map tricky pieces separately. Started with the inside of the mouth and the eyelashes. Not done the ears and there's still overlap in the mouth and nose that I have to deal with.

Question: I figure I can attack the ear same way. Map it separately from the rest of the face. However, due to the anatomy of an ear you get very complex overlaps in 3D space. How do you attack UV'ing ears while keeping them somewhat easy to paint on later?

Question 2: Judging by Mike's face texture from his website, he's not mapped the ear separately, but instead I think he's done some tricky manual untangling.

How? Once I understand that (along with all other approaches)I am hoping I can arrive at my own preferred method of doing things.

Take care now folks.

there's hardly ever been a time where a UV projection with no per-point adjustment has been adequate. and with something like a face, I can tell you that it will 100% always require per-point adjustments. It's simply a matter of patience, and understanding the shape of your model. Some things may require their own UV space... the inside of the mouth, the backside of the ear, for examples, since these parts of the face are so overlapped with the rest of the geometry, it's difficult or impossible sometimes to keep them with the main head UV shell.

Thanks again Mike. Lovely bit about understanding the shape. It helps somewhat to think of it flat on the ground.
I am more looking for thought process when I say attack rather than a magic button to do it for me. Method. But I hear you. I just need to let it sink in and combine it with testing and experimenting a lot. I don't mind the moving around bit at all, but I am extremely intimidated by why am I moving this UV that way. You know :) Worse than drawing that first stroke on a blank piece of paper.

Here's a first, quick quick paint pass just to see if the map is ready to paint on. It's not. There's not enough room for the ears and nose still, and there are a couple of overlaps. Sheesh they're hard to spot unless you zoom in like a madman. One more attempt at untagling nose and ears in this cylindrical projection are in order before I try planar mapping.
Thus, the color map is not subject for critique. It's just a quick slab of paint to test accuracy. Having done this quick test helped me understand more about the dark arts of UV'ing. Nothing is lost.

I have a feeling I am wasting precious resolution on the sides and down at the bottom where the neck is. If I shift stuff around there's more resolution for the front of the face. I hope things won't distort or stretch out of control.

Disaster. Trying Planar projections and I think it's for the worse.
Conclusion 1) Cylindrical is far better so far.
Conclusion 2) No one mapping method is gonna cut it for such a complex form as the face. Going to try and mix a couple methods as a starting point next.

A problem with the planar here is that I am not sure what dials to twist to make it better. No matter what I do I make more of a mess to the square distribution.
I think one of the problems here is I ran a couple of relax UVs too many.

I assume none of you would paint on this. Is it salvageable or start over from scratch?
Here's the UV map, left to right: inside of eyes, eyelashes, inside of mouth, Under chin, ears.

The above UV map front and side. Here's where it gets uggly.

if youve got maya 8.5 theres a new tool in the uv mapping panel that allows you to colour the faces so that if it overlaps (or is reversed) it comes up a different colour, great for sorting out overlapping problems etc etc, its in the UV Texture editor -> Image -> Shade UV's.

That sounds like a great feature indeed, but alas. Older version. Would of been lovely though :)

Here's another quick paint test on the planar UV map and it's clear there's too much "bleed" that comes from the badly layout UVs. What's the term? Swimming textures?
Back to the UV mapping and less painting lol.

yeah your goal is for all the numbers and grid lines to be as straight as possible.

What I will typically do is use an Automap to break up the mesh into pieces that are all to the correct scale and then go in by hand to cut and sew it together the way I want.