Technical Slop

UVW 2

In all of the 3d forums that I visit, UVW seems to be a topic asked about rather frequently. There are quite a few tutorials out there, but I figured I would write my own.

This is my own flavor of things for UVW mapping in 3DS Max.

To start, copy the mesh and hide one. One will be the working mesh and the other one is to be left intact.

So, start pulling the mesh apart into pieces that make sense. Go into Poly mode, select, and Detach to Element.

So then I went into Element mode and hid everything except for the "L" shape in the front. I think it's the microphone, but I'm not sure.

Back to Poly mode, select, and Detatch to Element some more. Once a Poly is an Element, it is rotated into place.

Here is the microphone thing completely unfolded.

Yeah, it can be lots of work. But it's not so bad once you start getting the hang of it.

I also took the liberty of Welding some verts together.

Then I moved on to those top parts. I unhid everything, then hid the Elements that I wasn't going to be working on.

I don't know why I pulled those two top pieces apart -- I ended up welding them back together.

See that top Poly on the bigger trapezoid shape? Well, I NU Scaled it down a bit to cut down on distortion. This is a story for another day.

Then I Detached to Element the sides, front, back, and bottom. Here they are in place and welded back together.

Hopefully you can visualize it. This hunk is certainly easier to visualize than the microphone when unfolded.

Then I got to work on the lens. This is the last major piece.

First, I Detatched to Element the front and moved it slightly out of the way.

Then I selected a Poly on the cylinder, Detatched to Element, moved/rotated it a bit, and welded one set of verts back together. The idea is to break the cyclinder along only one set of verts. I could have just Broken the verts, but then I would have had to deal with the individual Faces that make up the Poly. :yech:

In order to unwrap the cyclinder with some precision, I used a Sphere Gizmo. Man, those things are handy.

The idea here is to use the radius of the Sphere Gizmo as a measuring tool. Pick a vert, then drag out the gizmo until the next vert(s) are on the S-Gizmo's circumference.

Move the S-Gizmo, back to the cyclinder, Vert mode, and move Verts.

Make sense?

See? Not terribly difficult.

Then I grapped the front, brought it up, rotated it a tad, and welded some more verts.

Here it is completely unwrapped.

Ta-fucking-da.

Then I unhid all of the Elements and arranged them like so. I wasn't terribly anal in all of the steps, so some of the lines are a tad crooked. Live and learn.

Once I was happy, I hit UVW Map and used Planar. I made sure the proper axis was being used, then I hit Fit and Center.

Now, UVW Map told me Length: 89.657 and Width: 92.793. Those numbers will never do. I mean, that's just a shitty ratio to work with. Normally I would use 100:100 for a 1:1 ratio. However, my UVW Map acts on a 1:1.5 ratio sometimes, so I had to use 100:150. Even though I used a ratio of 2:3, it really gave me a ratio of 1:1 (which is what I really want). Check your local listings.

Hit Texporter (Unwrap Object Texture), and saved the wire frame.

Then I hit Unwrap UVW real quick with the wireframe tossed into the background. Looks good, so I saved the UVW file.

Then I unhid the unwrapped camera mesh, hit Unwrap UVW, and loaded the UVW file that I just saved. It looked good, so I guess it all went well.

Then I took the wireframe into PhotoShop and did a quick and sloppy map for it.

See? Quick and sloppy.

When I apply that map to the meshes, this is what I've got:

Oh... ah... Pretty spiffy, eh?

Quick Note: When manually unwrapping the mesh, do not create or destroy any verts! Doing so will mess up the vert order and that's not good at all. You can weld and break all you want, but do not create or destroy!

This is just the tip if the iceberg. There is a lot more to learn about UVW mapping. Get to work!

play.fiddle.learn