When importing my Maya mesh into UE, my texture is massive. So I’ve been expanding the UV shells in Maya to compensate. They need to be well beyond the 0,1 range. Thing is, I would like for them to be real world scale, so that each material in UE looks fine.
I’ve seen that it is possible in 3dsmax. Is there a workflow ya’ll use in Maya to do this? I would imagine it might be in the Layout UV options, but can’t find the appropriate one. Right now i’m scaling by eye, but that is unreliable. I CANNOT believe this would not be a feature in Maya. If so, wtf?
Something I do is I’ll export some BSP out of UE4 and into Maya. I’ll then inspect the UV shells in Maya. That gives me a clue as to what the scale of the UV shell should be. I can then use that as a point of reference when building other things in Maya.
The thing you must understand about Maya and UE4 is that they are very different beasts, and a lot of the time, you must gently coax either into doing what you want, especially when it involves something such as this.
Ahhh, I figured Maya & Unreal would work really well together. Darn. It’s not super elegant but it’ll do. Thanks for the reply.
The other issue I am having is scaling a shell to match the size of another shell (so I can move and sew edge) is incredibly difficult because AFAIK there is no scale snap to edge option? In blender that would be a cake walk. But here, the scale tool is jittery, and zooming in doesn’t necessarily help. Any thoughts on that?
EDIT (Continuation): For context, I am planar projecting 3 times on each axis a wall. Each time I project, it does so within the bounding box. So after projecting three times, each shell will have its own scale, making it difficult to sew them together. What’s your workflow?
Yes, the layout option is great for making UV shells have similar density. Just remember that this depends on how good/accurate your unfold is. A bad unfold with a lot of UV distortion will confuse the Layout UV and give you bad results.
Another thing you can do is sew a UV edge and then use the “Unfold 3D” tool to unfold the vertices.
Made a video showing how you can use the Unfold 3D tool to get similarly sized uv shells.
Oh wow that was immensely helpful to watch you work. Were you ‘relaxing’ the UV seams there? I’ve not got that far in UV making to know how to do that, but have heard of the technique. Like you’re painting it on almost? It looks so effortless and, dare I say, beautiful!
Ya I think for now it looks like my method is working (for proportional shells). I am doing architectural meshes so they are simple. Nothing gets distorted. And for sizing i’ll do what you suggest - compare with existing BSP mesh from UE.
