Hi,

This is my first post re my first Maya project, so please forgive any forum faux pas I may commit.

Below is a screen cap that will help illustrate my question.

I want to create a bump map for the engine of the pod racer. The bump map will show rivets, panels, dings etc.

The engine is a NURB that has been textured with a number of layered textures incorporating various ramps and procedural textures.

I converted the NURB engine to a polygon in order to export some kind of visual reference to photoshop to enable me to create the bump map.


I tried to create a UV map, but I am unable to create a meaningful UV map to export to photoshop. I have tried a variety of options that either result in a complete mess or a square grid that gives me no clue as to which part of the engine correlates to which part of the UV grid.

QUESTION 1: What is the best way to create a spatially accurate bump map for this object?

I notice that the colour map is showing up in the UV Texture Editor.

QUESTION 2: Is there anyway to export the colour map that shows up in the UV Texture Editor?

I am using Maya 8.5 and PS CS4.

Cheers