I’ve tried unwrapping my model using seems and even though its faster I later had to put more time into organizing my islands. I will try marking my model with seems again and unwrapping again as a whole. Will report back once I’m done. I will also try aligning my islands in the UV layout so that they match with their 3d model.
I’ll look into sewing tutorial for blender but I presume that stitches islands so that they are combined. So for my image above I would stitch together islands that I want to have “aligned” texture, once imported into blender?
Yep. The stitching of UV shells is very important and is something that does need a bit of planning ahead. If you want you’re texture to look continuous so there is no breaks or noticeable tiling on your texture then stitching is something that would be required when you are UV’ing.
Also another thing to note is to make sure you’re UV shells are ‘flipped’ correctly. Some people you will see use a generic material/texture when UV’ing their models (something with numbers or letters and a grid) this is to check that after they have created a shell from either using a projection method (such as planar projection) that the texture on that shell is readable. You always want predictable results when you are UV’ing, this makes the texturing or painting process much more easier.
Another bit of information for you which is also important is distortion. This goes back to what I was saying about making sure you’re UV shells are all relative to the corresponding faces of you’re model. I don’t know if Blender has this but when you are UV’ing you usually have some sort of visual tool which will show you if you’re UV shells are distorted, this will help you when it comes to the texturing phase as you will get predictable results of a nice even crisp, high res texture.
Here are some tutorials I would recommend you check out to learn more about UV’ing.
Also check out Digital Tutors they do a free 30 day trial and have some very very good Blender tutorials on pretty much everything including UV mapping.
I think with “textures don’t look properly”, you mean seams. I did a model like yours and the unwrap to show you why that happens and how to fix it. It is in 3d studio max, but unwrap is unwrap. I hope you understand it, it hasn’t got audio.
First I show an example of what you are doing and why you see the seams, then I do the unwrap so you can see how to fix it and I hope you understand why.
Thanks for the tutorials. I’ve already been trough the one about UV unwrapping but the one about distortions was very useful. I was thinking on subscribing to BlenderCookie but I’ve found the Digital Tutors site today. So right now I’m struggling with which one to go.
@ikifenix
Thanks. You’ve confirmed that I must stitch islands that I wish to have continuous textures and they must be aligned in the UV layout.
UPDATE ( for all the people that helped me so that they know it was not in vain )
After a good time fiddling around asking on this forum and watching tons of tutorials I finally finished my mesh and import it in the UE4 without any errors In the end the tutorial from Jonathan Williamson helped me a lot and answered all of my questions when it comes to UV unwrapping and editing, which I had most issues with. I encourage anyone who is starting with modeling to take a look inside blender cookie.
Now as you see above the edge is very visible in the UE engine ( marked red ) and upon close inspection inside blender it can also be seen specially when set to smooth ( the above model already has edge split modifier applied so its harder to see). Anyway the way I build those two objects was by creating separate mesh objects ( shown by yellow marker ) and later join them. I never thought this could cause any issues and in all fairness it shouldn’t right? I’m so close to finishing this but now I’m a bit lost as I have not idea what is causing this.
that’s cause by the edges being separate form each other, if you look at the example mesh I made you will see I made it as 1 solid piece with the faces joined together witch will help you avoid the issue, you will probably need to re-do that bit to fix it properly.
2 things you could try as a quick fix:
1: select the edge of the long piece(vertical), subdivide it once and then merge the new vert with the vert on the top piece(horizontal), doing that would make it solid(you would probably need to tweak the UV a little as well).
2: select those faces and click on flat, I know you’ve used smooth shading with the edge split but it might fix it.
also it looks like the smoothing is a bit messed up in UE4 witch is making it more noticeable and it needs to be fixed in blender before you troubleshoot it in UE4.
I presumed that objects edges will merge once vertices are aligned and the objects are joined together. So this means that this is not the case with blender and is there another software that does this? Maya maybe?
I’m not quite following what you mean by that.
I’ll rebuild this model tomorrow. Third time’s a charm the say.
Yesterday I watched the Blender conference which talks about Topology of a model when I realized to not have edges shown, as in my above model, is to have a continues loop. Checking my model closely and I noticed that for some reason all the vertices are not merged because the button was disabled. I reverted to my untextured version ( because no modifiers are applied ) and started joining them and voila, it’s fixed.
Dang, you’ve definitely got more of a talent for figuring out UV Unwrapping than I have!!! As another noob, I love Blender but it’s definitely a little confusing when it comes to UVs.
I’m not too bad at the modeling and rigging part but I’m finding UV unwrapping to be something I’m putting on the backburner lol.
I really need to invest a weekend or two into slamming my neck in the door until I get it down.
Now as you see above there is something utterly wrong with my lightmap. I used smart UV project to unwrap my mesh for the lightmap since I followed a guide on youtube. I also made sure that I have enough padding between my islands so no UV’s overlap. I can’t find many tutorials on lightmap so I’m again turning to you guys for help. I can also upload my model if needed.
Here is the picture of the second UV map for lightmap.
ok the answer is to many seams, again this comes down to the way its modeled and the way you’ve done the light map, not sure about your time zone but if you want i can try and do a live stream (tomorrow) with you to show how i would do it, i’m no pro just a hobbyist.
i say live steam that way you can ask whilst i’m doing, not sure if twitch or google hangout but we would need at least 2 way audio either dolby axon or raidcall , its up to you
i’ll check back later
ps i’m on CEST time zone, the same as Berlin/Paris
There are seams but only on the back of the model which normally a person would not see. But considering I used Smart UV project for the second UV ( lightmap ) which adds auto seams ( I believe ) that surely is the case.
But I’m all up for your idea. The way I’ve unwrapped this model for the diffuse texture was to select individual faces and unwrapped them and later arrange the islands so that the UV layout looked like it does bellow. because I had no idea how to cut this mesh without visible seams. But I always wondered how a more experienced modeler would tackle this.
I’m from Slovenia and my timezone is UTC+1m which is yours? If you have the time tomorrow or in the near future please let me know because I will take all the help I can get. I’m finding modeling to be something that I enjoy very much and refuse to give up
Anyway we can use which ever program you like. I’ve mostly used teamspeak but I guess others are pretty much the same. The only problem ( maybe? ) is that I’m working in the night this week so we might find it hard to meet up. Send me a PM on what you think. Please know that if I don’t respond right back to you I’m probably at work and it will be quite some time before I’ll be able to reply back. You can also find me on Skype and Steam so if its feasible let me know and I’ll send you my name so you can add me as a contact.
Here is the UV layout of my diffuse texture to give you and idea of what I meant earlier.
I’ve tried increasing the lightmap resolution to 128 ( is it safe to go higher? ) and I’m building my lightning on the maximum settings in the editor. Geodav is right and Smart UV project is probably the problem.
yes it is safe to go higher but you shouldn’t really need to. smart UV can work sometimes but it often gives artefacts like those (same as the auto lightmap generation in UE4 can).
In the end the tutorial from Jonathan Williamson helped me a lot and answered all of my questions when it comes to UV unwrapping and editing, which I had most issues with. I encourage anyone who is starting with modeling to take a look inside blender cookie.
