Best way to appy UV's to subdivs

[MCronin]

I don't know if you are glossing over your intentions or if you have a misconception about what multiple UV sets are. So I guess I'll try to clear it up just in case. Having multiple UV sets means that some or all of the individual faces of the object have more than one set of UVs applied to them. Meaning that, say the character's head has one set of UVs for it's color shader, and those same faces that make up the head have a second, different set of UVs for say a bump or displacement map. You can break up your UVs and lay them out according to parts of the model and overlap them, and apply different shaders to them while the object is whole, and still have them all contained in one UV set. There is no need to break up your object.

The best way to map a SubDivsion surface in Maya is to map the polygon proxy. It's best to do it this way becasue you will have fewer UVs to deal with, and you will have access to all of Maya's UV mappng tools. As far as seams are concerned you'll just have to work that out with your UV editing and Shading/Texturing. There is no automatic way to eliminate seams.

If you take a look at the RAT tutorials, there is one that shows you how to map a model in Maya, apply maps and shaders, and get your UVs into Renderman.

[MCronin]

Also, if you are using Renderman subdivisions, you will be dealing strictly with a polygon proxy in Maya anyway, so you'll have to lay out UVs with the polygon UV tools.

[rebo]

Thanks for the advice, im dealing directly with a polygonal model, not using the full maya subdiv surfaces.

Im sort of comfortable with laying out UVs with the polygonalUV tools, but it isnt really my strong point. Idealing what I want (as far as texturing goes) is one color map for the head and another for the torso and another for the legs. So in effect i would have three bitmaps each for those partifular parts of the body.

Is that a good way to proceed and is it possible, or should I have just one color map for the entire model, therefore having one bitmap image.

I probably have fundemental misconception about how it all works.

For reference this is the model I want to layout UV's on after it has been rendered as a subdiv object.

http://www.apat67.dsl.pipex.com/medic_front.jpg

[liquid_tension]

YOU CAN CONVERT YOUR SUB D'S back to polyfons and texture the polygons when you are done with all your texturing you just go Convert to Sub D's again and it will keep all the textures perfectly with out issues.

[rebo]

argh noone understands me, Im really crap at explaining this.

This is what i have been doing so far..

1)Selecting all the torso faces, applying cylindrical mapping and selecting create new uvSet.

2)Selecting all the Headfaces, applying spherical mapping and selecting create new uvSet.

3)Selecting all the Leg faces, applying cylindrical mapping and selecting create new uvSet.

4)Selecting all the Arm faces, applying cylindrical mapping and selecting create new uvSet.

So i have 4 uvSets, the reasoning is i can then have 4 color maps connected to 4 shaderse each for different parts of the body. The question i have is... will this work in PRman and is it the correct methodology to use? Im also not 100% clear how i would connect each shader to the different UVsets. I think im going about this the wrong way...


:thumbsdown::hmm:

[Cobalt7]

If you have maya 4.5, you can convert your subdiv model into nurbs, and then take the UV generated by the nurbs back on your subdiv model.
I'm not sure, but i think this method works with PRman...

[playmesumch00ns]

I've got a model mapped with 8 different UV sets. If I try to convert to subdivs the extra UV sets just disappear!

[beaker]

>>So i have 4 uvSets, the reasoning is i can then have 4 color maps connected to 4 shaderse each for different parts of the body. The question i have is... will this work in PRman and is it the correct methodology to use? Im also not 100% clear how i would connect each shader to the different UVsets. I think im going about this the wrong way...

Yes, you are going about this the wrong way. Mtor subd's don't support multiple UV's. You need to have them all on the base UV set. Also you don't need separate UV's in order to apply different texture maps. All you need to do is select faces and apply them to the shader. You can have as many maps applied to different UV's as you need in one single uv set.

Are you using maya subdivs or Mtor subdivs? If your using maya ones, then I suggest you switch to Mtor. They are 5x faster.

[rebo]

Thanks beaker thats cleared things up for me.

p.s. Im using MTOR subdivs.

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