Texture Map Help!

[Chris Lee]

Hi, I am having some troubles with the texturing process. when i unwrap the model, how do i layout the points and wireframe on the unwrapped uv map so that everything matches up after i textured it and wrap it back onto the model? If anyone can show me the process that would be great! Thanks!:)

[Erik]

What program do you use?

To see if your UV's are evenly layed out (i.e. no stretching or areas on the model that have more texture space than others) use a checkerbox texture.

Simply create a pixel map in photoshop in a checkerboard pattern (no anti-aliasing!) and apply that to dthe model. If you now move around the UVs you will see two things:

1. There will be seams in the map. This is where different parts of the model have UVs assigned to them that are in separate UV pieces. You can see what happens on the seams with the checkerboard, because the checkerboard pattern will be 'broken'. It can be difficult to get a nice texture across a seam sometimes, so make sure you hide the seams where they will rarely be seen (the armpits in a human for instance, or the inside of the leg), or use a location that will have a natural seam (the boundary between two materials, for instance between jacket and trousers will do nicely)

2. There will be stretching. The goal is to keep all the checkerboard squares as square and evenly sized as possible on the model. Moving UVs will show you that the squareness can be warped, scaling shows that the distance between UVs determines the size of the checkerboard squares. You don't want big squares at one point and small ones at the other, because then your texture resolution will vary (i.e. big square: low detail. Small sqare: hi detail). Experienced mappers sometimes do this on purpose, scaling down the UV's for the bottom of the foot for instance so they don't waste texture space.

There are many tricks in mapping, but the two rules above are basically all that it takes. Layout the UVs like you want, filling up your texture area as efficiently as possible. Try to avoid seams where you don;t want them and try to keep the squares square. You'll find that the better the squareness the more seams and vice versa... it's a balancing act.

Try cgtalk.com for some tutorials too

Good luck hope this helped

E.

[Chris Lee]

Thank you so much! thats alot of info and help. I'll try that now and look into the tutorials too. BTW i use 3DS Max 5 to model the character and texture map. Thanks again Erik!

-Chris L.

[Erik]

Hey no problem

With Max you have a nice unwrapping tut in the max help/documentation. It is about unwrapping a spaceship, i think.

E.

[Waylon]

I wrote a tutorial on uvw mapping in max 5, shortly after it came out. You might find it useful.

http://waylon-art.com/uvw_tutorial/uvwtut_01.html

If you have any questions, or if there's anything I didn't cover, let me know!