For the last few days i have been producing a scene in unreal with some simple models i have made in Maya 2014, and i just cannot get my head around it at all, the uv unwrapping ect i have watched multiple tutorials, i can follow that with the models “They made” but when i do it with the models “i made” i get completely lost. What im doing at the moment is creating the models in Maya then putting textures on in unreal but you cannot edit how they look.
I can easily apply textures to geometry made in unreal because it lest you edit the material with surface properties, my models tend to have issues like this
Which is not so attractive.
TLDR; im really struggling with UV mapping my own models, are there any other programs that is easier or is there a way around it
Hi. Some people use UV Layout software for unwrapping. Heard it is pretty good. Others use the free UV Roadkill. In my case, I find Blender a great and fast program for UV unwrapping. select edge>Ctrl-E> mark\unmark seams>U-Unwrap and you’re done. For Maya users, I have made a controll scheme that emulates Maya behaviour and also some sort of guide. You can unwrap in Blender, then export back to Maya. Here are the scheme and guide: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?324685-Blender-complete-guide-for-Maya-users-(with-adapted-controll-scheme-file) Hope you’ll find them useful.
And about your problem…seems that your texture it stretched. You need somehow to make Maya display the texture stretching then remap the stretched parts. UV Layout displays stretching in a color code. In Blender, you press N, to enable proprietes pannel, and under display enable stretch. To get good results, you should keep your UV map colour blue. More info here: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Textures/Mapping/UV
It can take some time to get used to any new tool especially when you are starting out, don’t let it discourage you. I would stick with UV unwrapping in Maya if you are already familiar with Maya. Is there a particular part of the process that is tripping you up? Does the concept/reasoning behind why you unwrap a model make sense to you?
Ok you want to match the 3D-object (model) with a 2D-object (texture).
Taking a cigarrette-box as an example you would do this by cutting edges and unfolding
until the 3D-object is in 2D-space.
(ok, you don`t do it really, just for visualizing the concept)
Regarding the artifact on your model, as already mentioned, is due to
the texture-space available for this model. Visualized with the red bar
it is obvious that the space does not match proportional with the given
2d-space. Therefore the fewer pixels will be stretched across the surface.
(Or like in your case 1 pixel will be stretched all across the front side of your cabinet
As the users above have mentioned, having a good unwrap is key to getting a good texture. It can be a tedious process but it’s a necessary one. Also, this process carries over to lightmapping as well. You’ll need a good lightmap UV on your 2nd UV channel to get good shadows. Getting in these habits early can really help solidify your progress with 3d modeling and games!
While I’ve not used Maya’s UV unwrapping it shouldn’t be too difficult to learn if you already know how to use Maya and have it at your disposal. I’ve always used 3Ds max. I Mahri726’s suggestion with RoadKill UV last night and found it to be easy enough to pick up as well. RoadKill UV Intro Video. The one benefit with this program that I saw in the 30-45 minutes playing around with it was that it auto-packs the uvs once you layout the seams. Packing the UV space was always the part that I dreaded doing even as much as I do love Tetris it’s not a game I always want to play.
I know I’ve mentioned it before along with other users on here.
A good model cannot save a bad texture, but a good texture can save a bad model.
If you need any further help keep posting and we’ll all jump in and give you some killer tips!
You can paint directly on the mesh but the UVs will still need to be completed. The painting is referencing the texture space and it’s location in the 0,1 space. Even using a Flatmapping would be feasible to break the polygons and lay them out to be painted. The problem with that is when you have a more complex model it will break more apart and generate something that has significantly smaller polys. Again, for the painting this won’t be bad. When you create the second UV channel for lightmaps and if you leave it like this it will greatly affect how good your lightmaps appear without having to jump the lightmap resolution up to some significant size.
