Figure 37. Single Cylindrical Map

Figure 37 shows a Whole Body polymesh (left side) and an extracted cylindrical texture map (right side). The map has done a good job of capturing the color of outward facing surfaces, but the colors of enclosed areas, such as between the legs and under the arms, are completely missing.

Figure 38. Divide and Conquer

Figure 38 shows the same polymesh divided into a number of different segments; a cylinder map for each of these is enough to capture the color of the entire surface.

Note how the head is separated from the torso. It would be possible to extract a single map for head and torso combined, but in practice its often better to treat them as different segments. The face is an important part of the character of each individual, and by creating a separate map and polymesh you can allocate more pixels and faces to this important area.

The segments are separated in Figure 38 to make them clearer. As you will see below, there's no special tool for segmenting, and no physical pulling apart of the polymesh. You just hide and void parts of the polymesh in turn to create the segments as you go.

Figure 39. First Segment

OK, to begin the whole process, make sure ortho viewing is on (i.e. hit the <o> key), then use the <h> key to hide all but the segment you first want to extract. Figure 39 shows the left arm from the whole body polymesh.

Figure 41. Centering

Now use the viewing controls to orient the arm so its centered on the dashed vertical line. Typically this will mean some middle mouse drag to move the center of the arm onto the center of the axis guide, then <Ctrl> and some left mouse drag to spin the view to get the arm vertical (see middle of Figure 41). This would be followed by three presses of the left or right arrow keys to rotate the view by 90 degrees, then some more middle mouse drag and <Ctrl> left mouse drag to get the arm vertical from the side (see right side of Figure 41).

Figure 42. Locating Seam

Finally, view the arm from above (three presses of the up arrow key) (see left side of Figure 42), and spin around (left or right arrow keys) to locate the start/end of the cylindrical map (see right side of Figure 42). The short horizontal solid line in the axis guide indicates this point.

In the above example, the seam has been located on the inside of the arm; if there happens to be any rendering artifacts because of the map wrap-around, they will be less obvious this way.

Hint: For finer control over the seam location, use <Tab> to reduce the left/right arrow key rotations from 30 to 5 degrees.