types of texture mapping
 

Hi i am very new to UV mapping ... got couple of newbie questions

I would like to ask ,can planar mapping be the solution to all types of mapping?

like for example a human body ... i planar map from the front view and planar map again for the back.

What advantages do i have if i use shperical , cylindrical or other types of mapping...

my next question is : for example i map a dinosaur, i would map the body and limbs seperately, how do i ensure the mapping is seamless pls refer to the pic

Do i have to sew and merge the UVs?

pls advise

Thank you in advance

The perspective view of it

Thank you

hi . the first thing is there is no right or wrong projection to use.What you are trying to achieve is an unwrapped 2d map of the uv's so you can make a 2d texture to fit , so the thing to do is find the best workflow that suits you for instance some people might use a spherical map to do a head where others might use a cylindrical and maybe a planar also.
You need to map the objects the best you can and then you will most likely have to manually unwrap the remaining overlapping edges in the uv texture editor.
The point about the stretching of your numbered texture is yes it will affect the final texture since it is a reference of how your texture will fit on your model ,so stretching on the numbers means stretching in the same place when you apply your texture.
With regards to making seamless joins the best way is to move and sew the UV'S as much as possible , of course there are cases where you will not be able to sew the maps so what you try and do is either hide the join by mapping so the join is somwhere on the model that might not be seen i.e the back of a leg or under an arm ect or you might be able to align them in the 1 to 1 texture space but not necessarily sew them but it will give you a reasonable chance when creating your texture to align the seam.

hope this helps you a little but it does take practice and a lot of patience.
regards J.S.

hi thanks for the reply.

after much exploration i managed to unpack my UVs, although i not sure if it is correct but now i encounter another problem

initially when i did my UV mapping , i did with half of my model

after finishing my UV mapping , i mirror geometry my model ,
but how can i duplicate the inverse UVs?

thks for the help

ok once you have duplicated your geometry or mirrored it before you combine , open the UV texture editor and select the UV's on your mirrored geometry making sure you have the whole shell (it will look in the UV editor as though you only have your original UV's but infact what you have is two sets of UV's directly ontop of each other so they look like one set),so whith the mirooed shell selected change to the scale tool and scale the UV'S in the direction you mirrored ie if you mirrored to -1 in the x scale the uv's in the x until you get a mirrored version of the uv's and of course don't forget to move them from ontop of the other set. you can now if you want combine your geometry and merge the verts.

hi got another question about UV mapping

assume i do planar mapping for the body , how do i ensure the texture is not stretched ?

refer to pic

1) small planar map , texture nicely displayed , big on UV editor
2) large planar map , texture stretched, small on UV editor

ultimately i want to arrange all my UVs on the top right corner square for export and painting so
when i click UV layout , it arranges all my uv into the top right corner square, after which the texture on dino is stretched again

will this affect my texturing later, pretty confused here

pls pardon me for my noob question

what is the correct way of uv mapping and arranging them .
is there any hot keys?

thks

the other pic

hi , when you click the UV layout button maya will fit the uv's into the 1 to 1 space as best it can so it will scale them down but it should not stretch them.I myself and most users I think prefer to scale the uv's myself and move them to the top right square as i can arrange them exactly how i want for texturing.
scaling the u's down will make the texture bigger on your object which is why the squares on your body are bigger, you will have to scale the other part too to match.Try to keep all the squares as evenly sized as possible, it's not law but it will make matching your textures a lot easier.
unless you are extremely lucky some stretching after mapping is inevitable so you have to go into the UV texture editor and move each uv individually until you mininize the stretching, if you can't remove all the tretching then the thing to do is try and hide it in places it might not be noticable.

thks alot dude, really enlighten me alot on UV mapping