multiple UVsets in maya - HELP?!!!!

[anthonymcgrath]

can someone please help me on this one?? I can remember when ppl used to help out on this... now its just 'check out the pic of my latest woman...oh hang on, I'll remember to attach it first'

[danylyon]

I don't exactly understand everything.. and I have only tried multiple UVsets once a bit.. all I can remember is that you have to assign the Place2D node to the correct UVSet.

You do that by going to "Window" - "Reletionship Editors" - "UV Linking" - "UV Centric"... or was it "Texture-Centric" ... eh.. at least it was somewhere there :hmm:

[anthonymcgrath]

yeah, have just found this out actually. It goes some way to alleviating the agony and I can understand that it allows us to specifically organise uvsets to shaders but bloody hell!!!!

[womanonfire]

I've had this evil problem before ! and yes the solution was in the Relationship editor>UV Linking... But then I discovered all sorts of problems exportiung the multiple UVsets into a format that could be imported and understood by our realtime engine... But this is a whoooole other issue. Good Luck!

[bigfatMELon]

OK, ok! Ya gotta allows time for some folks to get around to reading this forum sometimes.

your approach to building this differs greatly from your problem description. That is, you are saying the problem is with multiple UV sets, yet what you describe has nothing to do with multiple UV sets. You are mearly projecting UVs with multiple materials and creating sub-objects. In this case, there is not need to create multiple UVs. Explicitly defining your needs will surely help.

If all you need it multiple materials assigned with varying projections, then it doesn't really matter if the material gets assigned properly att projection time. all that maters is that the UVs are layed out in a usable way that that you are able to select the polys and assign materials to them at will. I'm sure that this sort of thing is functional as we have an office full of people doing it all day long. Well, when they aren't playing Animal Crossing, that is.

If you are really after multiple UV sets, then here's the deal. Your best bet is to Create your UV sets as needed. Then assign your *ONE* material to the object and. Yes, you could use more than one material, but then that sort of precludes the point of using multiple UV sets. Anyway, with your material assigned, connect your file nodes to a Layered Texture node, which will then be connected to the color attr (or whatever other channel is being used). Once you have your textures hooked up properly, visit the UV Relationship editor and establish relational connections for each UV set and the texture channel they should be associated with.

-jl

[anthonymcgrath]

apologies here. My understanding of having multiple UVsets was so you could attach multiple textures and organise them accordingly but it doesn't seem to work as simplistically as that it seems!

My understanding here is that I use one uv set and lay out my uvs on that area but keep each area of uvs seperate from another area - ie: no uvs from one set on the model overlap another set of uvs on that model. (hope this is making sense).
now I can just select those faces and assign a shader with colour map file to those faces. then I can select another set of faces and assign a second shader. Not sure If I'm on the right track here?

[bigfatMELon]

This is what i was getting at in the last post. You aren't describing multi-set texturing. You are describing UV projection, layout and shader sub-object assignment. If all you are doing is selecting portions of the model and projecting UVs and making sure that they don't overlap, then there is no need for multiple UV sets. Are you actually defining new sets? (ie: using the UV set tools such as Create Empty UV Set or Copy UV Set)

The reason to use multiple sets is when "layering" multiple maps over the same areas of the model with control over how each of them fits the model shape. This is commonly used in games to achieve complex looking results with smaller textures by altering the tile frequency of small texture swatches over the same areas of the model. This need only be done for game engines as you can generally do all of this stuff with a Layered Texture node without multiple sets.

Try this. Make a few materials with different colors. Create a sphere. Select some polys from different areas on the sphere. Assign one material to each. This operation is more like what you are describing and no UV sets, save the first one, are required. If you were to select each poly area and project from different areas then you would still be using the same UV set. Projecting is just a way of quick way of laying out UVs. No new sets will be created unless you specify that when projecting (and I don't think you want to in this case).

-jl

[Mr Fudge]

How do you then display, say the alpha channel in the, "UV texture editor" for the second set of UV's for a layered texture?

Thanks,
- F

[anthonymcgrath]

reet - finally figured this one out haha (only about a year later)

my main prob was mr's initial inability to deal with it correctly but it seems much better in newer versions of maya (I say new ....version6 haha)
basically I plug the first texture into a lambert and apply to the model

I create a new uv set for the model

I then create a 2nd lambert - apply transparency map to it plug it into a layered shader network that already has the first lambert in it

I then simply add this layered shader to my selected polys and plug the trans map into the new uv set :)

hoot

ant
creator of online diaries and waffler
newc
uk

[joie]

I think it must be a simpler and elegant solution for this, not involving any layered shaders or so..., something to do with the "UVchooser" node, check help docs for this, I can´t really help you on this since I tried this the other day trying to figure out, but, since I don´t work anymore on that I moved on to other things..., sorry for that.

Post your progresses.

[anthonymcgrath]

yeah there probably is but this worked with mental ray so I'm more than happy and when you think about it - it kinda makes sense. Nice thing is you can plug more and more textures into the layered shader and connect them to your uv sets and keep the models original shader untouched but still make changes and know it will propagate thru into the layered shader :)
I know this is nowt special but I'm quite happy as I were trying to figure out how to dirty the underside of a characters foot.

I'm quite interested if anyone whose working in games can tell me if their engines are ok with multiple uv sets? I know most modellers in games swear by one uv set and just neatly lay it out but can anyone expand on it?

thanks guys
ant
newcastle
uk

[joie]

In these cases, the best thing is not the more comfortable to you, but the one that renders faster..., and the layered shaders are the least fast, so I´d give a try to that "UVchooser" node, your programming team will thank your efforts.

[anthonymcgrath]

sorry about that the two subjects aren't related - I'm not doing this for any team - its more for an animation I'm working on.

As for the uv chooser - is that up in the relationship editors menu? If so thats the one I'm using but this layered shader method was the only way to get it to layer the textures appropriately. Can you expand on any workflow for this?
cheers
ant

[joie]

I thought you were in a work team, sorry.

The "UVchooser" is not in the editor, is a node you can plug in your shading network, like the "place2D" node or so. But I can´t explain it further, as I mentioned earlier, I moved on to other things before I could reach a solution for this.

[anthonymcgrath]

no probs - I've worked in games dev teams before and it was just something I'm curious about. I know all dev teams have different approaches (some definitely stray from standards haha!).

I've noticed that uvchooser node before - I'm gonna have a play with that tonight and see how different it is - cheers sir!

ant
newc
uk

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