UV mapping hands
 

How do you guys UV map hands? Im using maya but all the planar, cylindical etc seem to make a mess of it or distort it with the planar map. Auto mappin creates loadsa tiny fragments and it would take forever to match em all up like i watched in one of mikes tuts, + i think that would cause some major distortions and probs. There dont need to be a lot of detial o the had itself cos its a cartoon feel im goin for. Anyways thx.

You can isolate sections of the hand and UVmap them separately. Then you can stitch them all up as required in the UV editor.
You'll get some tips from Mike Mckinley's tutorials on his site (I think its the polygon texturing one) at http://www.mtmckinley.net/

ive got the poly texturing one but although its very good i dont kow how to layout the finger cos my char has 4 fingers and getting the sides in it the main prob how do you fit the sides in because theres not much gaps inbetween fingers

I've seen on a couple of tutorials that they often build a single finger, cylindrical map it and the duplicate it to make the other fingers. Then you already have each finger UVmapped. I think I read that thats how Mike did it for his game artists guide to maya book.

Alternatively you could isolate a finger similar to using the technique in mikes polgyon texturing vid, clyindrical map it and then move onto the next finger.

UVmapping is a bit mad to start with but stick with it and things will eventually start clicking into place.

How about cylindrical modeling each finger and texture each seperately?

ok thx for the advice UV mapping is really annoyig me atm cos its just ot as rewarding as everything else + with this being my first model im begin to see things in the modelling that are making texturing very hard, in future i will diffinatly model to make UV mapping easier but only way to learn is to try.:attn:
ill post how it goes when ive tried it, later.
josh