Project Reality Forums

Okay, new edges





i also worked the edges of the indent and that's the best that would come out of it, not much definition there.





Fuse with exaggerated edges

and my low poly "cones"

Good job. Just ma/e the cones abit deeper, so its harder to see it as a cone

Nice work! Yeah make them deeper, and get rid of those squares around them, shouldn't have any impact on shading and will save you a couple of tris.

Okay took care of those! Time to start watching UV tutorials?

do use this
TexTools

in conjuction with something like this
pullin shapes - Roadkill UV Tool

and good luck on your UV journey.

and when youre Unwrapping, and are done, just remember to bake with a cage, and set your lowpoly smoothing groups to be on UV edges

Hmm, I'll look into these tools. Regarding the roadkill tool, is it better to get the plugin for max or the standalone?

Depends. I have the standalone, since it accepts meshes from other programs too. If you know you will only use max, you could get the plugin

Alright, some newb questions.

1. Should I attach all separate objects including the fuse and UV them all on one sheet? Or should they all be UVed separately?

2. Also, I've started cutting up the model into seams as that's what I assume I should be doing, and then assigning them to planes. The problem is the pieces all get out of proportion.

Picture:



So you can see the top and bottom are the size of the side panels and are all distorted. I'm sure there's an easy fix for this, or I'm not sure if this is even the correct way to start UV mapping. Either way, this is all pretty daunting when first starting out.

1) all on one sheet

2) max has a relax tool. textools have it better implemented. if fixes stretching to a minimum. then when all is relaxed, you can normalise(dont know about max, but textools have it) also have you tried roadkill? it will really make it all easier for you

I do plan on using all the plugins but I'm first trying to get my head around the basics as I don't even know how the plugins will make my life easier . I'll see if i can't find a plugin version of roadkill, as I probably won't be using it with anything other than max.

Edit: On that note, why does textools have to be used with something like roadkill UV?

ah. i can give you a more indepht explanation of UVing and the quirks tomorrow now, bed time

I think that what makes your UVs square like that is that you left "Normalize" or something like that checked on your UV Unwrap modifier. It takes whatever cluster you are unwrapping and makes it fit the UV square. Not what you want, really

I've personally never used relax tool, textools or that roadkill thingy and yet I would say I can UV Unwrap reasonably well

Normalize was the culprit. Anyways, I did most of the unwrap. Tell me what you guys think. And there are some points of questions i have.



Cant seem to get the cone right. Any tips?



The slanted edges also look wierd. You see I had to distort it in the UV editor to get it somewhat the same proportions as around it, and even then its not perfect.



Looking decent?

dont mind the cones, just stich them with the main face together and realx. itll be the best you can do

also id have that indent stiched to the top face and the indent face stiched to it.

otherwise looking good

Ok cool, in that case do I relax the entire face or just the cone? Its still looking funky either way. Although it worked perfectly for the slanted face.

you should relax the entire island. if it gets funky, break the cone from it, relax on its own, then resize and stich back on.

Got any literature on what relaxing does? Never used it to be frank. The way I see it, Uv of that cone will always look like that, you can scale it up so you get more texels on that rim where the streching is most noticable, thats about it. Cant imagine any magical tool taht would fix it, because simply the UVs cant chnage much.

Btw, i think that a way to getit less streched is to make the cone a bit shallower, but then you will loose some of that feel of deepness you want.

relax does whats it says in the name. it moves verts to create an island that is undistorted.

Well no matter how I relax this, it always distorts something, whether the cone or the face surrounding the cone. Would it be such a problem to leave it as is? I mean the hole itself is probably going to be a dark texture where stretch isn't too noticable/will barely be seen. Or am I missing something that I'm not seeing?

I think Doc.pock is relying too much on his shiny tools a bit, there are problems they wont help much with. If you think this is the best you can do with it, Striker, leave it like it is and start packing.
Oh and one thing, delete that straight oart of handle that goes invisibly underthe clamp. It wont be ever seen, no need to waste tris & uv space on it.