Unfolding curves from a sphere to a plane

# 1 17-07-2015 , 08:49 PM

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Hello everyone,
I'm brand new in the community of Maya (and on this forum). I joined the world of 3D when I discovered that Unreal engine 4 was free to use...and so much questions have poped since !

Enough for the presentation, let me explain my problem for which i've been stuck since last week :

The goal is to create a texture of a volleyball in photoshop. The geometry is quite complex, but i've managed to recreate it in 3D

user added image

what i'd like to get is the plane version of theses curves, so I could use it as a canvas on photoshop and make the texture/normal map out of it. I've looked around "UV mapping" but it seems that it is for the opposite, when you already have the flat texture ?

As I said i'm fairly new to maya, my learning curve has been very steep but only in the animation part of this huge software ! A little help would be...very helpfull.

Thank you guys

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# 2 17-07-2015 , 09:47 PM

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I think you have got the wrong end of the stick, you need to flatten the UVs not the mesh to take to photoshop..................dave

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# 3 18-07-2015 , 02:34 PM

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Daverave,
You are right, but my problem remains solid.
What I was tring to get was UV seams from those curves. but it's not exactly going to help me.
My goal is to, in Unreal engine, make a simple sphere and apply a "simple" rectangular texture and deal with normal maps instead of modeling a precise volleyball.
In a lot of tutorial, people juste take a picture like this one :
user added image

and apply it on a sphere and it nicely goes wraping around it.
Now what if I don't have this image ? How can I create a texture that once wrapped around will make thoses shapes ? user added image

First I thought I would make a Mapping transformation, I managed to get curves in excel like theses : user added image

but then I realisez that I would not be able to get correctly the "dotted" texture of a mikasa volleyball if I directly go to photoshop.

I...really don't know how to do this. Like you said, i don't even know where to grab that stick.

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# 4 18-07-2015 , 03:48 PM

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Off the top of my head i would say loft a surface between each of the curves to create the volleyball then convert them to polygons and combine and finally in the UV texture editor export a snapshot of the UVs for use in Photoshop.
Seems long winded but it really is not and it will get you what you want.

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# 5 19-07-2015 , 12:39 PM

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A different approach. Try to get a picture showing the ball from the top (As close as you can get). Use a projection node to project this from straight above onto a sphere (Keep the default UVs that are created by Maya for the sphere.) and bake it out. That will give you an idea of what the lines should look like for the top half of the sphere. The bottom half of the sphere is a mirror image of the top in the x and y axis with the colors swapped.

Tinker with that in Photoshop using paths and you should end up with something close to what you are looking for.

I did notice that there is a lot of logos and writing on the ball including the top and bottom. The standard spherical mapping is going to bite you there. The top and bottom have the most distortion.

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# 6 20-07-2015 , 07:46 AM

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Hello and thank you for you answers !
@jsprogg, I think this will be the approach i'll use. I made other models to get a little training on maya and I understand a little bit better how UVs are used. I then realised that with a standard spherical mapping it will be a pain to make the bevel regular (and @PixalZA, your message made me fully realise it, I did not even think about logos yet).

I'll surely keep you informed, thank you guys for the help !

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# 7 25-07-2015 , 08:09 PM

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Hello,
I managed to trim a nurbs sphere to get my desired shape (instead of what you suggested to loft, because it was not giving me a sphere in the end) but I would like to "sew" the surfaces together before converting to poly because it is creating polys that are not continuous.

My nurb trims are from the same nurbs sphere, but treated as separate surfaces like in the picture below :
user added image

Is there a tool i'm missing ?

Thanks

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# 8 26-07-2015 , 07:30 PM

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I don't normally send stuff modelled but it was a pain to do and the mesh is not that great, to many tris for my liking. I have UVed it to be easy to use in PS....................dave

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VollyBall.zip (21.9 KB, 317 views)

VollyBallA.zip (52.4 KB, 305 views)

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Last edited by daverave; 28-07-2015 at 02:50 PM.

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# 9 28-07-2015 , 08:02 PM

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Thank you Dave !
May I ask how you managed to model it ?

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# 10 30-07-2015 , 04:56 PM

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I did most of this on the hoof, looking at volly showed me how the edge flow should go so that's what I did for vollyA. VollyballB has the caps fixed (fixed one on the left).............................dave

Edit:VollyBallB is attached to this post

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Last edited by daverave; 30-07-2015 at 08:00 PM.

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# 11 30-07-2015 , 08:25 PM

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Thank you so much for your help guys, i finally managed it !
Dave, I hope you don't mind that I did not use your design, the fact is the lines were not exactly how they are in the real model, but it was so cool for you to send a model I could not say anything ! I hope we're good user added image

I'm afraid I have to say, i did not know about the birail tool...so once I did, i managed to make 1 "slice", extrude it into nice quad polys, and duplicate it ! For now i added a smoothed square poly inside to fill the gaps but i will work on that. I will also take care of the pointy part of the slice, as seen below the narrow part of the yellow slices are not perfect. and I will measure the exact proportions off the slices on a real model, to get it right !

user added image

Thank you all for your answers !! user added image

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Unfolding curves from a sphere to a plane

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