carrying on

i explained before that i will be continuing with this blog with more characters to be UV mapped.

my next challenge is to unwrap a character made by my friend.
i will be starting this as soon as i get a bit of time.

here's the model

first UV mapped character

for my first ever UV mapped character i am fairly pleased.

especially with the body. as you may have seen i had major problems with the head, this was due tot the fact it is a sphere, trying to flatten and unwrapped a sphere is impossible without either seams of serious stratching which is a shame because it is the only glaringly bad part of this map. like i've it is something i can come back to at a leter stage and hopefully sort out once i become a little bit more confident with my skills.

i have enjoyed UV mapping so far, it seems to be both extremes. at times it can be very easy and strangely simple but at others it can be the biggest pain in the arse and prove very difficult and stressful. so far in this blog i hope you have seen me develop some skills, going from pretty much no knowledge of it at all to at least attempting to UV map a character.

it was never something that caught my eye but now i have tried it it's deffinitrly something i will be paying more attention to as time goes on and i will be carrying on with this blog and challenging myself with new models to UV map.

part 2

I've carried on with the unwrapping of moom

in my last post i had shown i how far i had got, i had done the arm/hand and leg/foot

i am pleased to announce i have finished.
it wasn't the easiest thing i have ever done and i haven't got the best results but it's definitely something i can work on at later date.

next step was to do the main torso. this wasn't too hard. the model not being the most detailed in the body made it slightly easier for me.




as you can see this quite nice, all pretty smooth and the UVs flow nicely which will hopefully show when the checker is applied.

next job was to do the head, tongue and eye socket.

the head gave me real grief... it being a sphere proved very difficult. this was easily the hardest part of the model. you can see how difficult i found it when looking after i applied the checker texture. It was hard not have blatant seams... i think this might be why he is only flat colours and not textured, but who am i to say that? it's just my theory.



i tried a couple of different ways, like having it more vertically set out but i finally settled on having more even throughout, as wide as it is high. as you can see in the above image.

the final two parts i had to do were the eye socket and the tongue.
the tongue mainly staying within the model meant i could do the seam down one side.



and the socket was almost done for me, the rough outline was there i just had to piece in the circles inside each other.



so this completes my unwrapping of moom

next is to apply the checkerboard texture and see how its gone.







as you can see it's all pretty even throughout the body and stuff but the main problem just like i said was with the head.
here are some images of what i am talking about.



the front isn't terrible but could definitely be better.

the back isn't as good...




as you can see there is serious stretching and the seams are very visible. like i said this is something i can work towards to improve at a later stage.

its been a while

sorry it has been a while since my last post, i am honestly finding it hard to do both sets of work let alone keep up with the blogs for both as well.

I've had to rethink a few things with my other project which has just been playing on my mind...

anyway, no excuses! I'm back!

so last time i posted i said i would be unwrapping Moom.

here's our guy



i started to UV map moom, just like my hard surface mapping i decided to cut down on the confusion i would map only half the character then when i mirror it it will mirror the UVs.

i decided to use automatic mapping to split it all up so i could then piece it all back together manually.

this is what i initially got




so not particularly messy just a bit bitty and cut up in places (mostly head area).

from what i had learnt from my research i decided to do it in stages, separate the UVs for the torso, the arms, the legs and the head. yes wherever they are split there will be a seam but hopefully it being in these areas it wont be to obvious.

i started out doing the leg and foot.
the seams for this would be where the sole of the foot meets the edges of the foot and then the inside leg. this is because they are the least visible areas on this part of Moom.
the UV looks like this.



next up was the arms, the process was very similar to the one for the legs. the seams being where the palm meets the edges of the hand, just like the sole of the foot.
the other being on the inside of the arm.

the arm/hand were a bit more fiddly than the leg and foot. mainly because of the little bits in between the fingers etc not being connected, i had to sew them into place piece by piece at some points which was pretty long and monotonous.




so far this is all i have done but i will be continuing it asap.

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.