Could UV unwrapping possibly suck anymore!
 

God UV unwarpping is such a pain in the bloody ass!

I spent 15 hours today trying to unwrap the cabin of the mech I am working on and in the end it was all wasted time because I got the textures all warped and could not fix it.

I don't know what the hell to do. I want to texture my models but unwrapping is just too hard.

In a hard surface mech there are a ton of either beveled edges or edge very close together to knock off the razor sharp edges of the model but it then makes it impossible to unwrap.

There is no way I am going to sit there and click every single tiny face on each surface to unwrap. It's just retarded.

I could right the damn automatic mapping algorithm. Just make a UV shell for every single polygon in the god damn model!!!

CT , try using a planar map for each side of the body.Just select the front faces and map it then follow on with the two sides and top and bottom, you will end up with maybe a little unwrapping but with only about 6 pieces to sew together.
UV mapping is all about picking the best projection for the object you want to unwrap and you don't have to map the whole object at once if you just select the faces you need at any given time.
Hope this helps a little regards J.S.

How many time are you going to post this stuff up about how you hate UV mapping.

Look into the seletion tools, Shells etc etc, then converting these selections try to learn what to do on a more simple model, maybe get a tutorial on it.

Or, as you said, write a script that does what you want it to

JS the thing has sides nested within sides nested within side so what 'side' do I map is the problem. Plus look as the highlighted edges, They are all beveled so trying to pick the faces of one 'side' takes hours.

F1 does a good job.

Yeah gster, like it had not occered to me to read the manual. I guess if you like reading 3 pages of techno-babble that could just as easily be explained with one or two simple examples. Half the manual help pages read like...

UV fold - Used to unfold uvs. The selected uvs are unfolded. ... and fifteen more sentences that says uv unfold unfolds uvs. Okay, that's great I just read 20 sentences and I now know uv unfold unfolds uvs. But I still have no freaking clue how to use it or its 50 option properties! I don't need to know what a tool does! I need to know HOW and WHEN to use it!

Also, F1 explains each tool independently and says nothing about workflow and how they are used together.

Read the help on "uv unfold" with no prior knowledge of uv mapping and it may as well be written in ancient sumarian.

The help manuals always a good place to start, so what it if goes on, if it didnt I bet people would complain thats it too dumbed down etc etc, also the techno babble might be of some use if your wanting to understand how things work and why they do what they do, for scripting purposes??

I dont think its confusing, not if you read it top down (why would you jump to one section without any prior knowlage of the subject, you dont jump in a car and start driving without knowing what the pedals and the wheel does...)

If your also really confused have a look in the tutorials in the help files, its all there you just need to look and think about each tool and what to do with them.

It is infuriating when it dosent go as amootly as what you think it will, you just need to stick with it taking it one step at a time building up understanding.

Personally, I would do as jsprogg suggested. Because, really, how close are people going to get to this thing when you display the final? I would imagine most of the shots you use would show the full body, right? In that case, planar mapping each major side is very valid. Yeah, it'll be stretching in a lot of small crevaces. But if people can't see it, then that really doesn't matter.

Good luck.

I could swear I tried to planner map the sides but got all wrapped aroudn the axle. The model has a lot of beveling on all the hard edeges and each side has lots of faces extruded out so there are "sides" nested inside sides. So I am finding it difficult to select the faces on the "side".

I also need to figure out how to hide stuff I have already mapped because it's getting majorly confusing. It does not take long to have a jumbled pile of mappings all stacked on top of each other and then its a mess trying to pick them apart.

But I'll keep banging at it.

I still hate it though. I would not mind if UV layout was horrible, and tedious, and labor intensive, if it took a reasonable amount of time. I can deal with a certain amount of pain. But for me I want to model and texture. I see UV layout as drudge work and the fact that I have to put significantly more time in uv unwrapping compared to the time I spend modeling and texturing is just getting me down.

Just read your re-edited post, just a little thought on the matter on your part might help, if you know what they do, then think about their applications, or maybe give them a test, rarther than wanting a hand in hand walkthrough of everything.

If you want to hide selections then select the faces that are not mapped in the uv texture editor then goto panels view selected, I would move the comepleted parts outside of the 1:1 area just for ease and then move them back in when everythings finished.

what I do is add a numbered mapping texture just to the parts selected as I map each part but leave the unmapped parts on the default lambert thus making it easy to see which parts are mapped and which are not .

Jsprogg,

how do you do that? I'm uv mapping just now too, and sometimes it is assigning the UV to the default shader when I uv (the black and white check). Be good to know how you choose this.

How do you choose which faces are assigned to what surfaces?

thanks,

gubar

Gubar probably whats happening with you is that under the Create UV's menu you have Assign Shader to each Projection checked, if you uncheck that then it will keep the shader that is currently assigned to the object.
What I do is first create a numbered texture (you could use the checkered shader if you want )in the hypershade, then select the faces on the object I want to map then right click and assign that shader just to those faces and then uv map them.Continue selecting faces and assigning the texture and mapping as you go , because it's the same texture as you UV map the pieces of the same object the texture will just continue seamless, once you have all the pieces mapped sew them as best you can to make a complete UV map, it might be necessary to mabe leave one or even two pieces unsewn but on the same map but genrally you can sew together pretty much everthing leaving seams where you can see them too much.

I textured the sides I plan to planar map. I have attached screen grabs. Is this a good plan?

For the most part I am only concerned with the seem between the front and side (red/cyan) and the front and botton(red/yellow) and the side and bottom (cyan/yellow) only up to the first corner.

On the side and top extruded bits (I have indicated) I am going to get an unacceptable amount of stretching. How do I deal with those areas?

bottom persp

no offence ctbram, but that looks like a pretty easy model to unwrap UVs for.

as others have suggested just pick the faces for one plane, planar map them and then pull the UVs to one side before you tackle anything else. then planar map the side planes and move them to one side. if you are remapping areas you've already layed out than sure you're going to have a problem... but really...how can you not know what you've already mapped?

As for dealing with areas that you've extruded, such as the yellow square extrusion on the yellow plane, i would select the face nearest the camera, ctrl backclick to change to UVs and then use the scale tool to pull those UVs in and then use shift > to move up the hierachy to pull the next loop of UVs in and so on... but really, as Mike said, that's only if you are majorly concerned about stretching.

to constantly complain about something taking a long amount of time when you are just beginning to learn it is just unnecessary - I mean obviously it's going to take a long time because you've just started learning it, but it's not like it's always going to take 50 hours.

as for the help files, i have to agree with gster on that one, I find them pretty helpful and certainly not that bad when it comes to techno babble.

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Just and Idea, and I have done this with easy success, select the faces you want to UV at one time, and automap them. In your UV editor, simply sew everything together. Do that or all areas of your model. This way you wont have to worry about a huge mess to figure out out to put together. All your doing is working with one side at a time.

Here is an exmple of a cube I auto mapped from one side. I just selected all the faces on that one side and simply automapped it.

Here is the UV map. Everything is allready sewn together here BTW.

Not sure if this plug-in will be of help to you or not but I have used it for nearly all my uv layout work and it has saved me a great amount of time.

http://www.pullin-shapes.co.uk/page8.htm

hope it helps

Excellent find leonlabyk!!!:beer: That plugin is a real time saver, especially for human modeling. So easy to install and use. I hope your reading this ctbram, it should work great with your mech.

Here is a practic head that I unwrapped with it.

also a good tool is unfold, after you sellect uv border vertex check the pin borders, then unfold,
check pin unselected vertex then unfold.

Meaning all your edges that look stretched will become less stretched as they will be reconfigurated according to the geometry in 3D