uv layout
 

I have a lot of characters I would like to begin texturing and am wondering if there is any software that can help with laying out my uv's ready for texturing. I have tried to do this myself but it is painstaking work and I simply suck at it :headbang: . I assume there must be software or plug ins to help with this process and would love to know of any that people might recommend.

Cheers,
Leon Labyk

I'm afraid that UV layout is, like modeling, something you have to dig in and do yourself. One great thing though is that you can do the layout on one model, and provided the geometry has the same number of points and so on, you can transfer this UV layout straight onto another model. So what you can do is make a duplicate of your original model and move bits around so that you can much more easily just use cylindrical mapping on various parts such as the legs and arms, and planar mapping on different parts of the face (you can UV map separate bits by just selecting the faces and UV mapping them alone)

So for example if you look at my toon spider WIP you'll see towards the end that I duplicated the spider, then stretched the legs out to the side. Then I selected each leg and used the cylindrical mapping on it to get the majority of the work done, and then spent a while on each tidying them up. THe back end there was already more or less mapped (it was made from a sphere) and the face and body took longer, as I had to do planar maps on the sides, front, top, bottom, and lips separately, and a cylindrical map on the eye sockets. All in all it took me about 5-6 hours to UV map the whole thing to a level that I'm satisfied with (I'm a newbie, so I'm slow and easily satisfied!)

another good hint while you are doing all of this, is create a few lamberts with plain colours like red blue and green. Then when you select an area to UV map, apply one of those colours so you can check easily that you haven't forgotten to UV map any particular faces.

I have so far found a demo of Ultimate Unwrap3D which seems like it may speed up the process and wonder if anyone knows of any others. You are probably right though radical Edward and I may well be wasting my time trying to find shortcuts when I should instead face the fact that I will need to spend the next month learning and improving at laying out my uv's. I just would of though there would be some software that would give decent results straight off the bat. Guess I am just lazy when it comes to the crunch.

Cheers,
Leon Labyk

search for " pelt mapping for maya " in google.

The pelt mapping seems a little trickier than what I was looking for. I found something that seems to be just what I was after + its nothing. Extremely simple to set up ant the results seem to be good enough to get straight on with texturing.

http://www.pullin-shapes.co.uk/

errr... that is pelt mapping.

Sorry I am a bit of a numpty when it comes to this area. I found this when I was searching for pelt mapping and found it quite difficult to use and simply assumed this was pelt mapping. http://www.highend3d.com/maya/downlo...ring/3860.html

I found road kill after searching through some forums and assumed it was something else. One day I will understand this package.

Cheers,
Leon Labyk

actually this is better and has a nice UI. and has a video tut for noobs wanting to pelt map.
http://www.sunitparekh.com/pelt.html