headus 3D tools

[LBX]

Hi everyone.

I'm new to unwrapping polys in UVLayout, just been playing around for a few hours with the program.

Both the manual and videos helped me a lot figuring out how to do a decent unwrap however I don't fully understand the color code when in UV mode, correct me if I'm wrong.

It's on the manual that one should avoid red segments within the shells, since red means that some polygons are overlaped, so as I manually adjusted points, the color changes from red to blue:

1-Do I need to get all segments blue?
2-The more blue each segment the better? or should I leave them somewhere in the middle greenish color?

I've an idea but just need to be sure on this!

Thanks in advance for any help on this matter
/Marc

[twocust]

Hi LBX,

Here's my take on it:

Green = good
Red = stretched
Blue = compressed

You can use the 'overlap' button to find overlaps (under Optimize panel), but
the shell color being red does not automatically mean there is an overlap there...
just that the UVs are going to be stretched.

Hope it helps.

[LBX]

Thanks a lot for the quick response twocust!

As I said before I had an idea on how these colors worked, you couldnt explained it better!

Thanks again!
/Marc

[headus]

Twocust has answered it actually, but here's my 2c worth ...

Red is stretching, which means that the applied texture may be blurry in those areas.

Blue is compression, which isn't as bad as stretching, but if you are painting equally sized features into the texture map (eg bullet holes, scales, bricks), they will appear smaller in the blue areas.

Green is best, and normally you're trying to get as much of it as possible by adding the minimum number of seams as possible.

Phil

[LBX]

I see!

Having tried different UV apps I find the color approach more precise in all situations!

Thanks for the aditional info Headus!
/Marc

[SuperSheep]

It appears you can never completely get rid of blue or red. There seems to be always some light red or light to dark blue on the UV shells.

[headus]

"you can never completely get rid of blue or red."

You can by making every polygon a separate UV shell, but of course that's not what you want either (many many seams). Flattening out a curved shape onto a flat plane is always going to be a balance between distortion (i.e. red and blue coloring) and seams. The more seams you have, the less distortion you have, so its up to you to decide for each model and situation if you require less distortion or fewer seams.

Phil