hi guys
im a newbie to maya and this is like my second model
its not the best but im getting there..
tell me what you guys think




i want to start texturing...
i kinda get the whole UV mapping thing
but its killing me because i dont know how to do it
i saw Mike's tut on texturing and how he cut his character into 3 parts.. legs.. torso.. and head..
when i try to do that something is differnt
lets say i select the faces of the head and neck
then i go to extract.. in his tut.. he gets 2 different objects.. i dont.. for me its still ONE object.. but.. not connected..
thats kinda bugging me..
can any1 help me out.. tell me how i should UV map this guy, i know there have been many threads on this.. lol but its a tough one.
ive been looking thru some threads and i saw this one
https://forum.simplymaya.com/showthre...g&pagenumber=3

and im wondering how he got that uv layout like that
how did he begin.. planar mapping?

this is what i get when i do automatic mapping

now thats the whole dog.. and its confusing.. when people make characters or high quality models.. do they UV map the model as one thing.. or they seperate it.. like lets say... the two legs.. arms.. maybe ears or face or something i dont know... how do they do it..?? and then how do they put it back together? wont the UV coordinates interfere with the the parts of the model when u combine them...

Mikes tutoruial on texturing is great... and thats how i kinda figured it out.. but he did a really simple face.. he didnt have to stich together the nose and ears and stuff in the UV editor.. if we're just using the face to texture i know that u kinda have to move them around and stich them... but what about the parts that are behind the front of the face... how do u get those to be facing u :-/ errrr
il just stop here and hope some1 responds...

sry for the long post.. i kinda got carried away :-p