Quick UV question
 

I always wonder. Are my UV's supposed to be straight as I can get them without too much stretching or are they supposed to bend like the object I'm uv'ing?

Picture for ease of description, both UV's in this are of the same object, one I made straight and the other one has a curve like the actual object, which one is right? I feel the one on the right is better than the one on the left, but would like other opinions.
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/1769/uvquestion.jpg

This is the object I'm laying UV's out for, so you can see the curve that I'm talking about of the object
http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/5...uvquestion.jpg

so I have tried it both ways with the numeric grid to check for stretching, both ways seemed about the same.

Interesting Mike....so the results were similar eh? hmmmmm I have always wondered this too. UV's are a pain to get the head around

cheers bullet

The purpose of UVs is so you can create a 2D texture for 3D space, right?
So if your method of creating the texture in 2D space (e.g. PS) results in a non-distorted render, you should be fine.
Another way of looking at this is to paint a straight line in your texture space. If the line is also straight on your model, you're good. This doesn't necessarily mean that the UVs themselves are in a gridlike pattern.

But the whole point is too avoid stretching right?? This can be a srious pain in the butt!! I tried one texture on a car speaker for a mate and man...it took about 10 goes to get it to wrap properly!!

cheers bullet

No, that's fair, I wasn't saying it was easy... I was more saying that as long as there's minimal distortion and stretching, it shouldn't matter what shape the UVs themselves are, though they'll probably be similar to the shapes of the faces.

Experimenting is the key I suppose mate.

thanks for clearing it up a bit for me stwert