Any Tips & Tricks on UV Layout

[Marcel]

In my opinion extra time for UV layout is never wasted. If you have a good layout then the painting is much easier afterwards. That is not to say that it is still the most boring kind of work of the whole 3D process :)

A perfect UV layout has no seams and no distortion, and uses 100% of your texture space.
Since you are unwrapping a 3D object to 2D space this isn't possible so you always have to make a compromise.

I usually hold great value of a layout with as few seams as possible, because I hate needing to match up two different parts of the texture. You can put the seams where you cannot see them very well, or at a place where the texture has a natural seam.

For a character for example, you can easily put a seam near a belt, because you have a natural seam anyway. For fantasy creatures you can give a bracelet to hide a seam near the wrist. For female characters you can use a pendant to hide a seam near the neck, etc...
I sometimes add extra props to a character just because I can use them to hide the UV seams.
Parts on characters where you do not see the seam are the insides of the leg. From the wrist you can go along the underside of the arm down to the hips.

Depending on which program you work in, there are some good tools to remove distortion. Sometimes the pelting tools can be a huge time saver. 'Unfold UV's in Maya saved me days on getting rid of distortion.

[Shellfish]

Ok... So how or what tips are there on painting a seam? As to match up the parts?

[Marcel]

Ok... So how or what tips are there on painting a seam? As to match up the parts?

I usually do this in Maya with the 3D Paint tool. You can select a very small brush and 'smudge' over the seam.

I've seen people match up seams in Photoshop just by painting a lot, and they got pixel perfect results. Not sure how they did it though.

[Shellfish]

Hmm... I never use it before. So you use that tool to "stamp" over the seam like photoshop?

[Shellfish]

This is UV layout good enought? Does it matter when the uv test grid looked like this or I just need to worry about the boxs not been distorted too much?

http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h193/shellfish_man/UV-Layout.jpg

[Marcel]

Do you have a lot of texture space? (in other words, are you creating this for a pc game?)
If you have enough texture space I wouldn't mirror stuff, and get rid of the seam in the middle of the torso.

You could get rid of the seam between the legs and the pelvis, unless your character is wearing shorts and you can easily mask it.

I usually try to get the whole torso as one piece. The seam is where you have yours at the side of the torso. You can then fold it open and have the pelvis, belly, chest, shoulders, high back, lower back and buttocks as one continuous piece. Sometimes you can even attach the arms to this layout.

Hmm... I never use it before. So you use that tool to "stamp" over the seam like photoshop?

Not really stamp, more like the smudge stick in Photoshop. Still extremely useful though.

[Shellfish]

Is this right for the torso? I really stuck on the jeans. How should I go about handering the UV layout?

http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h193/shellfish_man/Untitled-1-1.jpg

[Marcel]

I've send you a PM with an image with some suggestions. It's too ugly to show in this thread though :scream:

[Shellfish]

Thanks bro! I try it out.

[Shellfish]

Hi Marcel ! So am I right to say that one of the most important in UV Layout is that the checker boxs ( test grid image ) must at least look 80% similar to the flat texture image when viewed the 3D model with the texture in all angles? And yes! I creating it for a game but I want to keep my character file size to the lowest.

[Marcel]

Th 80% was just a rough number. Imagine that your texture is mapped twice as dense on the arms as on the torso. The arms will look much sharper and much more crisp, and the torso will look low-res and blurry. This wil make your character look inconsistent because the pixel density of the texture is not the same.

It's much better to have you character (and your whole game!) have the same pixel density all over, than to add some extra detail on a certain part because you have some UV space left. I little bit of difference is no problem though, so just see what looks good.

[Shellfish]

Please check out my Male Character here

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=4496763#post4496763

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.