I just wanted to share a quick tidbit regarded one of the most dreaded processed in 3d Modeling - UV Mapping.
I have tried just about every manual and automated UV mapping tool out there and i can honestly say that the best and easiest to use i have come across is the Unfold tool in Softimage. Since i have started using this tool my iteration and workflow have increased tremendously.
Basically you select edges/lines which will be used as the cut lines for your UV islands, using ALT+Middle Mouse to select an entire loop or ALT+Right Mouse to select a first and last edge which will select all edges in between.
Once you have your cut lines selected you go to **Property **> Texture Project > Unfold under the **Model **> **Get ** panel.
Now in the Unfold dialog box click Add to Cut Line then click Unfold and Pack, this will generate the UV map (sometimes you have to select **Unfold **under the UVs dropdown in the texture editor for it to show up after packing).
This feature works really well to utilize the most space in the UV map and keep all of the islands relative to each other in size and ratio so you don’t get any strange warping or overlap. Once done you can easily export your UV map to a texture with a wireframe alpha to begin texturing. This works well for everything from simple structural meshes to intricate character meshes.
I created a quick walk through video of the process, i was running on 2 hours sleep so forgive me if i sound half asleep in the video… Hopefully some people find this useful.
question: blender can do it the same way, is this faster in softimage then it is in blender?
while that is a very good tutorial to get people going I think its note worthy to say (for the benefit of others(especially beginners) reading this) that when creating the lightmap you don’t always need to separate the UV into that many islands as it can (usually only on bigger/more complicated meshes) waste a lot of UV space witch means you need higher lighmap res and it takes longer to build the lighting (if you have a lot of meshes with lots of wasted UV space it could take significantly longer to build the lighting).
True. The model I choose as an example was more suited than other models that I could have used.
The purpose of the video was/is jus to show how to add that second channel and make an automatic flatten. Im still waiting for my mic to be shipped, then I make some more in depth videos… I just hate to caption everything …
I use 3DS, Maya, ZBrush, and Softimage but Softimage has by far the best UV and modeling tools as far as I’m concerned, i rarely use 3DS for anything other than the occasional render anymore, i only use Maya for rigging/animation and ZBrush for detail and color painting.
As for Blender - I have only tried it once a while back and at that time it didn’t seam like it was going to be worth the time investment to learn it so i never really got to try all of it’s features but with the unfold tool in SoftImage it literally takes around 2 minutes to create your cut lines and have a usable UV map on a (by game standards) detailed model.
It’s too bad Autodesk is going to discontinue Softimage. I invested so much time learning 3DS and now it’s hard for me to even consider using it again.
I just made a quick walk through video of the process, i slowed it down quite a bit for the purpose of the video but this particular mesh took me about 2 minutes to finish the process shown in the video.
I’m running on 2 hours sleep so forgive me if i sound half asleep, i also added the video to the initial post.
By the way, the unfold tool in both Softimage and Maya is originally from a program called Unfold3D: UNFOLD3D® 2019 - UV Mapping Solution
It has the best unfolding method I’ve seen, as long as you’ve got your seams in the right place it will flatten it out really well.
Ahh sweet guys, can’t wait to give this a try. It’s the worst feeling in the world when you have made a kick *** model then realize you gotta UV it lol! Thanks for the video walkthrough Charleston
Cant really beat the feeling when made a **** model and UVed it like a king and then realize that the UE4 FBX importer is picky about Ngons… :rolleyes:
In SoftImage you can easily tell it to find NGons then either quadrangulate or triangulate them, I’ve had to do this a few times with my SoftImage to ZBrush workflow.
I adjusted my workflow to avoid Ngons altogether. This kind of more “disciplined” modelling also yielded successively better geometry.
It takes sometimes a bit longer to add that extra split or loop, but its worth it.
For the most cases, the UE importer is quite good. It seems it only has problems with Ngons that have holes in them (wall face with window, etc).
All “solid” Ngons worked so far bu tI like to have a consistent way of working.
Maybe autodesk has now too many products in the portfolio that do the same and/or target the same audience.
I somehow have the feeling that Maya and 3dsmax will, with future versions, have more and more simmilar UIs and one of them is also scrapped…
