Hi everyone! I’ve been working on mossberg shotgun and now I am stuck with this small piece.
Result of the bake looks ok to me, but I have doubts about the UV map.
Aren’t there too many UV islands? Or too many visible seams? I was hoping to make a game-ready model.
I would deeply appreciate any critique from you!!
Critique of UV
ducklover
#1
moogaloonie
#2
UVMapping has always caused me these kinds of headaches. My question is, what kind of texturing does this piece need? I try to minimize distortion on meshes that may get image maps, like stripes on a car body for example. A piece like this is likely to just get a worn metal or chipped paint texture I’d assume. Will it be getting anything like a serial number engraving or any mark that would need more of the UV space?
If not, I probably would worry less about minimizing distortion and instead reduce the number of seams. If you aren’t painting the textures using the UVs as guides, and instead plan to paint the object in z-Brush or 3D-Coat, does minimizing distortion matter? For example, the two sides of the handle, if straightened, could be left combined with the inner/outer strips and unfolded flat. If you just want to use the space more efficiently, you could even overlay some of the similar shapes (like the handles). Of course they would have to share the same part of the texture, but that would likely just be a worn texture that would not be easily identified as you’d never see both sides at the same time in order to compare them. I don’t think that’s a good general practice, but I’ve done it on pieces like this that simply needed ANY UVs to be usable.
Tiles
#3
As mogaloonie said in the sum, it’s always a trade off. But you waste a lot of texture resolution with your current UV patch arrangement. I personally would live with a few more seams here, since it allows to pack the UV patches much better. Which results in a much higher texture resolution then.