UV unwrapping

HI Everyone,

Just want to share my joy after months of playing around global illumination, tweaking settings and baking light maps.
This project was a port from one of the evermotion interior scene.

I still have a long way to go to creating more beautiful environments…especially in the area of uv unwrapping.

So far i have been relying on 3ds max’s uvw unwrap and the auto generation in ue4. However, i think there are just some objects that need to be unwrapped manually, no matter how good the automatic unwrap are.

Does anyone know of any resource for complete noobs like me in uvw unwrap :)?

which 3d modelling program are you using?

Hello…I use 3d Studio Max :slight_smile:

In my experience, UV Unwrapping (and Lightmapping, which is similar) are the biggest PITFA’s there is in the entire pipeline. The first thing you need to do (if you haven’t done so already) is to map a key to the Stitch command (I use “S”). Also, make sure that the Snap-to is enabled (you can adjust the distances in the Unwrap menus).

For a tutorial, I, to this day when I’m stumped or had a brain-fart, is this tutorial on tutsplus.com.

Another useful tool in the UV Unwrapping toolset is the Pelt technique, which can be described here.

You could also look at the peeling technique since your assets have alot more geometry in them, it will probably be easier to edit.

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/getting-started/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015/ENU/3DSMax-Tutorial/files/GUID-997A9CFA-427B-4E1B-AF6A-379341467601-htm.html

Basically you can place pins on your uv segment which controls the overall shape. The vertexes you have pinned will not move when you stretch the segment or whatever.

This mightn’t be the answer to lightmapping though!

Your project looks great btw!

Thanks Steve. I didn’t model the project actually. The original scene was downloaded from ever motion.com. I just ‘transferred’ them to unreal to see if the quality can be as good as that which is rendered by vray.

Anyways, thanks for all the input, i will definitely take a look at them. @SaviorNT, the stitch function definitely looks like something that i need.

Thank you!

hi hardyhutajaya,i saw your video,i think its amazing,every thing is clean and nice,i cant get this kind of result,would you pleas share your light setting.or tell why every thing looks alive in your scene?what is baking light map?is that something different from uving?

Yes and no.

Texture map is on UV set 0 while the lightmap is on UV set 1. The same tool is used for both (unwrap uv in max), however, they layout of the uv set is much different.

so its all about 2 channel of uv in the max?and baking light map is the built button in unreal?i watched a tut about bringing asset in ue from max (Digital Tutors - Game Asset Production Pipeline in Unreal Engine) and in that tut the guy didnt made two channel of uv,i think when you have overlaping in the uv,you have to make another channel whith no overlap…

Since I’m “old school” /laugh… UDK days… I’ve just did 2 sets of unwrap uv’s to create the texture uv set and the lightmap uv set. It seems that there is an autogenerate in the object rollout, although… i’m skeptical. I’ll need to test it out with some of my models that are currently being a royal pitfa to lightmap. I’ll post back when I have results (today or tomorrow)

thanks for your attention .wait for u

Hi Amir, I believe its due to global illumination. I use the same settings as koola.

I also use these settings for lightmass.
2015-03-05_0802.png

As for UV lightmaps, the fbx importer from 4.5.0 onwards has a built in uv lightmap generator. But i think to really get good lightmaps there are just certain objects that cannot be unwrapped automatically and have to do it by hand, hence the forum post.
Example.

This cabinet is imported with the iv lightmap generated by ue4.
80d21d62925d56ae4c21254f02b47c2c16f462fc.jpeg

This is the lightmap
ef964b60c27a74ff639101dce781fb3371fd2c41.jpeg

Look at the handle of the cabinet there seems to be some shadow glitch. Probably will need to touch up the uvmap but i am not sure exactly how. Lol.

thanks hardyhutajaya for sharing your world setting light mass,what do you mean about global illumination?there is one global illumination in post process volum…?
or you mean the whole lighting system,coola use the reflector and directional light,he also tweak ini base light mass,do you use them in your scene?sorry i have lots of question:) im new in ue and so hungry ,i saw a video named unreal paris(a project with ue4)and watched it over and over again,i wish some day i could create some thing like that,and about your video its very close to unreal paris and i love it.

there is a good video tut about uving in 3dsmax the link is bellow

also you you can find it in this address http://www.bentateonline.com/ and some more fantastic tuts

Hi Amir, i use koola’s baselightmass.ini settings. But only have 1 directional light source. I tried doing the reflectors but the effect is not nice in my scene. I think you can download the XOIO berlin flat and take a look at it as well. I learnt a few things from that project too. From what i have gathered so far, what makes a scene realistic is the soft shadows generated from indirect light(global illumination). I may be wrong yah, still new at this. Maybe the other more experienced artists can comment on this.

I see where your problem is in the UV map. Bottom Center row of each of the groups. Stupid question, have you tried to select all the polys, flatten, and sort by material? Or you can do it by hand if that doesn’t work.

Anyways, I tried the auto-UV lightmap and it’s ok… Still getting some shadow artifacts with normal scene lighting. For anyone curious, while setting up collisions, uv mapping, etc… of a few dozen models, I recorded a “>5 minute tutorial” on the process (although it seems that everyone here is too advanced for it! :wink: ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cXnMwmQmPo

And with that, I’m going to bed.

I don’t know how viable is my workflow but I’m getting the best results I’ve ever had with lightmass. I also use the automatic lightmap creation on import only. I just take my meshes in 3ds max and break them in as many parts as possible…so that each part gets a decent lightmap when I import, then I adjust the resolution in ue4, usually between 250 and 1024.

For example, I’ve done this with a simple chair, broke it in 8 parts. Resolutions ranging from 64 to 512). I also this this with a telescope for one of my scene, broke the model in 10 parts I think…ended up looking perfect in ue4. Baking can take a while but once it’s done it’s done! I also only have 8gb of ram. Soon upgrading to 32. Use swarm agent if you have access to multiple pcs!!!