UV Texturing & Mapping Questions

# 1 06-05-2012 , 07:50 AM

Registered User
Join Date: Dec 2011

Posts: 19

Hi, I want to do more UV Texturing in Maya, but I am quite confused as to how to go about it. I have done UV Texturing for a character I did before and a few other things that worked out pretty well, but it was a painstaking process and I literally had to process faces/UVs manually.

There has to be an easier or better way to do this. Every time I try to generate a UV map using the presets (Planar, Automatic, Cylindrical, etc.) It produces a mess that I can't possibly have any use for. I've done some research and have analyzed the UV maps of game models online and, looking at them, I can't comprehend how they did it since the map and pieces are literally all over the place and lack any sort of logical structure. How do you properly/quickly make a UV Map in Maya?

I know 3DSMax has a Flatten function, but I don't tend to use that too much, I'm more of a Maya person. Is there a similar function in Maya?

Also, I'm having issues making bump maps. I know what they do, but I'm having doubts on how to design them because every time I try using what I thought I know, it doesn't tend to work and ends up messing up my texture. Any tips on making bump maps?

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# 2 06-05-2012 , 09:46 AM

The thin red line
Join Date: Aug 2009

Location: England

Posts: 4,472

Check out the link below for UVs, I have got to go out but Im sure some one else will explain bump maps they are not that hard...........dave

https://simplymaya.com/forum/showthre...737#post336737

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# 3 06-05-2012 , 07:55 PM

Lead Modeler - Framestore
Join Date: Feb 2003

Location: UK

Posts: 6,287

Bump maps are essential a desaturated/grayscale version of your color map. the idea of the bump map is to obviosuly create a bump like appearance on your model.

The whitest part of a bump map is or would be the high point of the bump ie; a surface rivet and anything that is black represents the lowest point ie; a groove or a join between panelling. What actually causes the bump to happen is the gray area in between the black and white, hence the reason that some bump maps have a slight blur to them, though its not a necessity because usually the anti-aliasing on the image takes care of it.

Yeah creating uv's is can be a bit of a puzzle at first if you arent sure and you can tear your hair out. First thing I would say is forget anything automated that max does as its not the same as maya, and learn the absolute fundamentals of uv mapping.

The way you have to look at the planar, cylindrical and Automapping is that they are there to give you a head start, nothing more. Automapping can be useful because it can give you all the pieces of your model broken up like a jigsaw, you can then decide how to reassemble the uv shells. Just dont join up every edge as you will just create overlapping shells.

I personally use unwrap uv, but if you are stuck then as I said learn the fundamentals first.

if you want a real quick way to unwrap something, lets say an arm on a character, you could easily do a planar projection on the arm in a Y projection straight down. Now the first thing you'll notice is that the uvs are all overlapping in the texture editor. Its an easy fix. Simply select the edges on the underside of the arm and then select cut uv edges from the texture editor. This will then split that selection point. You can then use unfold uvs from the texture editor which will then flatten the uvs out. Where the seams selection is placed like on the underside of the arm is where the uv will separate from and basically flatten out to give you an unwrapped mesh in 2d space. The shape of the uvs have to represent the 3d objects' shape in order to give you a good map. Dont make the mistake of making it all tidy, with perfect squared uvs, only the texture map should be even across the board without stretching.

This is probably the most basic way to explain this, Ive done you a diagram on one of my own models

cheers
J

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