headus 3D tools

cragganmore · Posts: 6 Joined: 27 Feb 2008

I'm using UVLayout to layout UVs for a vehicle I modeled in Maya, and I'm wondering if anyone has suggestions for the best (or even good) way to slice up the geometry in the attached image. My neophyte attempts have been satisfactory at best.

This piece of the vehicle is quite prominent and will be seen from all angles, so I'd like to avoid seams and stretching at all costs. For reference, I'm going to be texturing this in Photoshop (as opposed to Body Paint, etc). I've attached the .obj file in case this helps.

Thanks for any suggestions.

headus · Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2008 6:42 pm Post subject:

Unfortunately, with a round shape like that, its one or the other ... no seams and distortion, or low distortion and a number of seams.

I've attached a layout that aims towards the low distortion side end of the spectrum, because that'll be what you want if you're applying decals.

One thing to keep in mind is that real world objects are often made with shaped pieces of sheet metal, so you'll see rivet or weld seams over the surface (see second image). In fact, UVLayout does a pretty good job of working out patterns for manufacture, so the UV seams you create could be exactly where seams would be in real life. You could even cover the UV seams with a thin strip of extra geometry, texture mapped with rivets, if poly counts weren't an issue.

Phil

headus · Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2008 9:46 pm Post subject:

One more thing ... when trying to flatten this shape with Shift-F (this pulls the shell boundary out to a circle as an initial step) the flattening "blows up"! The center UV gets thrown off to infinity, which is obviously not a good thing.

I have just found and fixed this bug, so hope to update all versions of UVLayout (including the Demo) sometime in the next couple of days.

Phil

cragganmore · Posts: 6 Joined: 27 Feb 2008

Wow, thanks Phil! Yeah, I'd noticed the "blow up" effect when doing Shift-F, but I thought it was me being stupid. Many thanks for adding that to the fix list.

I'll try out your slicing suggestions and see how it turns out. Alas, this particular vehicle part I'm modeling is molded from a single carbon fibre piece, so there are no seams. But hey, we can't have everything, can we? Smile

headus · Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 4:09 am Post subject:

Damn those seamless modern materials :-)

By the way, the Shift-F blow-up has been fixed, and I've now uploaded new installers for all versions of UVLayout; I'll be posting the "official" release notes tomorrow.

Phil

cragganmore · Posts: 6 Joined: 27 Feb 2008

Phil, your suggestion worked great. Thanks again.

headus · Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 12:02 am Post subject:

Looks good ... no obvious seams from that view. Thanks for showing us the final result!

Phil