organic UV mapping

so i have looked on some forums and a couple of websites and youtube at peoples examples of UV mapping a character.

just like hard surface mapping you want the checks to be as square as possible and the more even the better.
and also like hard surfaces you want to have as little seems as possible in the most hidden areas of your model.

here are some of images of examples of work

this is a final UV map for this character i found on someone blog



these are screen shots from a youtube video i watched.

in this image you can see the checks are stretched over the chest of the character this before he has used any type of mapping.



this is the final checkered torso of the character, as you can see its pretty much even all over apart from the top of the shoulders which he describes as not major.



these tutorials have been pretty useful with just familiarizing myself with the job ahead of me.

i have decided to go for good old moom
i have used moom a few times on different projects, i think a lot of people have...

i will be UV mapping as soon as i get some of my other project out of the way.

next stage

right, im not saying i am now a pro at UV mapping but i have done a few hard surfaces now, not that they've been the hardest surfaces to map but i've given it a go and the results i am pretty pleased with.

i think i might be time for to try to do some organic mapping. i only say this because it's so much harder and i think it would be beneficial if i tried to do both. so atleast i have an idea of how both ways work.

my plan is to look at some examples of peoples work, read up on how theyve done it. then go for it.

archway

i was thinking to myself, what could do i UV map now?

so i went with the idea of an archway, quite an old looking archway that would be made from stone.

so to start with i had to model it

this was my first my mistake, i modelled the whole thing then tried to UV map it...it was horribly messy and overlapped, it was proving to be confusing.




so i decided to try it again just modelling one half.



instead of mirroring the first half of the model straight away to complete the model, i purposely left it so when i UV map this side then mirror the geometry the mirrored side will mirror the UVmap also. which overall would save time and would make sure that both UVs are even.






as you can see in this image i have mirrored the geometry and the UV has stayed the same which means that to will be mirrored



just like before the next stage is to check if its all even by applying a checkerboard texture.

the initial size of the checker was too large and was hard to tell whether it was equal or not.




so i turned the number of checks up in its option panel.
this would make it easier to tell whether its even or not for the final texture to be assigned.



When mapping the arch i made sure the seams of the map were round the back of the model where it would be connected to a wall so there would be no visible joins.

as you can from the last picture above it's all pretty even, the only problem i have with it is because its mirrored the check on the top brick looks a bit stretched compared to some of the others but i think because it is mirrored it wouldnt be visible when textured.

time for something a little bit more complicated

so my last post was of UVing a cube which is ridiculously easy

for my next test to develop my skills further i have gone for a stranger shape.




for this i was sure which type of UV to create, i was torn between automatic or spherical mapping. i asked Fahran, a guy on my course who i knew knew about UV mapping, he suggested automatic so i went along with his suggestion.

the initial map was pretty split.
it was time to use some of the tools in the UV texture editor panel.

there are 3 main tools i will be using throughout this unit which are:



move and sew the selected edges




Seperate the UVs along selected edge




unfold selected UVs

so here is what i got from automatic mapping



i will now use the 'move and sew' tool to connect as many of the edges so to have as little seems as possible.



the shape i used was just an altered cylinder and the top and bottom were still flat circles. i wasnt sure whether to connect each triangle segment to the main set of UVs because that would leave a large number of seems, but on the other hand if i kept them together then there would be one big seem going around the top edge of the shape.

so i went back and asked Fahran for his advice, he said just to leave it as a circle for now...it all depends on how it's being textured.

as you can see in the last image i posted the UVs are quite uneaven in places, and quite drastically in certain areas. so this is a good place to use the unfold tool. this helps to even out the UVs.




this is my finalised UV map for this shape. i applied a checkerboard texture to it to make sure the UVs were similar.
You do this so you can check that all the squares are as even as possible, if some are bigger than others then when the texture is applied it will stretch. It also helps with locating the seam of the object.



as you can see from mine all the squares are pretty even with no glaringly obvious different in their sizes, this means when a texture is applied it should be even all over.

learning

I have a rough idea how to do UV mapping but the whole point of this unit is to get better at something i havent really done before.

so where to start? why not some tutorial videos?

i downloaded some video tutorials by 'poly face' (http://poly-face.com)

in these videos he doesnt explain too much about the whole theory behind UV mapping but instead takes you step by step on how to UV map a hard surface toy bike.
the bike is quite low detail.

the good thing about these videos are the fact he uses a couple of different mapping tools, planer, automatic and cylindrical mapping all on one object. He briefly explains them all.

this helped me get more of an idea of what i would need to do when trying to UV map.
and some of the tools i will be using which i will explain at a later date.
after i did the cube i felt like i should now try something a little harder.

UV-ing a cube

right

i am starting from the bottom so why not start with the most simple shape? a cube!

so i create a cube in maya



next i use automatic mapping, i do this because it maps it from 6 sides, my cube has 6 sides so makes sense.

i then open my UV texture editor window and it looks like this.



not much to map here, due to the simple shape when i created the UVs the work was done for me.
i decided to play around with it and added a bump map of some wood, i did this because at a later date i will be uv mapping and texturing a bench for my other unit so thought this might be good practice. i got a 2d wood image of google (when i do it for the bench i will be creating my own texture).



obviously because i only used one image, the markings repeat on each side of the cube, ignore that and look at the nice bump mapping :)




bump mapping is essentially taking a 2D image and making the darker and lighter parts of the image react to the light placed in your scene. it gives the effect of 3D.

there wasnt much i found difficult in this test, i think maybe i shouldn't have wasted my time... oh well got to start somewhere i suppose.
the main problem i discovered was that the texture image i used was slightly wonky, this made some of the lines in the panels of wood not match up on the edges quite right.
this can be solved by taking and editing my own texture images.

what i've found so far

i would firstly like to say i will primarily be looking into hard surface uv mapping.

this is only because i have heard it's slightly easier so as a beginner i thought it might be a good place to start.

by hard surface i mean anything that isn't organic.

so what is uv mapping?

once a 3D model is made it has its own polygon mesh, this is made up of all the edges and faces just like normal shape but a bit more complex. e.g. a cube has 12 edges and 6 faces.
UV mapping is the stage before 'texturing' (the applying of an image on a surface). So to allow the texture artist to easily paint the mesh it has to be mapped out.
UV mapping is the process of unwrapping the 3D mesh of a model down flat then connecting the edges to make as little seams as possible, the more seams the harder it will be to texture.

To get the initial UV map you select model you want to map, then click create UVs.
there are a few different ways of getting your initial map. It usually depends on the shape of the model when deciding what type of UV to create.
chosing what mapping you choose is crucial. basically what it is is the angles that the model is unfolded from if that makes sense?
e.g. automatic mapping is from 6 different areas, top, bottom and all four sides. Spherical mapping instead of unwrapping from such rigid angles tries to do it from all angles and unwrap it slightly smoother.

automatic mapping




spherical mapping




a little clearer?... hopefully as i go on it will explain itself... lets hope so anyway.

there is also planer mapping which is just from one angle, this would be good for this such as walls etc.
and cylindrical mapping which is quite self explanatory considering the other ways of mapping i have described.

so like i said i am a beginner so will start at the bottom and try work my way up from that and do some slightly more interesting models.