UV Mapping Mess


(obvious noob alert) Hi. I am trying to port some tron 2.0 models when i ran into a snag, every time i import them into blender and open up the UV/image editor, the UV map is a giant mess and is all layered on top of itself. I just want to figure what solutions i have hear besides manually unwrapping it. (which is a pain I can’t seem to find all of the points) any help would be appreciated.

Ugh, yep, that’s a real mess. I would just do the “donkey work” of manually selecting and marking seams and unwrap. I doubt you’d ever get anything useful from that map. Lots of good tutorials on youtube for uv unwrapping, basically, think unwrapping it as a paper model.

Is it really? If the UV islands are on top of each other it might look messy, but that doesn’t mean they’re not usable. Assign new color grid image to the UV’s and view the model in textured viewport shading. Another way is to enable UV selection sync from the header and view selected portions of the model.

If the UV islands are ok, could keep them as is, or could use those to mark seams and do another unwrap.

The UV-editor view seems to me as if the source system does some sort of “UV-layering” but NOT into one final view, but “layering” different UV-parts in some sort of stack. (the reason for this guess is that you can clearly adress the glasses at the top of the editor-view).

That would also mean, that the imported single mesh is in source enviroment a conglomeration of seperate meshes (objects - in blender-terms).

Would be interesting: a) what is the source app - b) what was used as “export-format” and within this, with which settings.

As JA12 mentioned, overlaping UVs don’t mean that they are messed up… is quite common to have UVs like this, specially when using multi textures/materials in the same mesh.

My bad, I should of been clearer. I was assuming single material, yeah, for sure, with multiple materials, each can overlap the same UV space.

Yeah, many times when you get a model like that it will also have separate Materials already. So you can open the model in edit mode and select by Material to be sure it is assigned.

Also there are times when the model will come in as separate meshes by materials. If that is the case and there are no materials, you can assign a material to each mesh part before joining them all.

If you have neither, then you will have the task of matching the UV to each map. I assume you have maps? Switch to the mode where there is no UV in the editor unless parts of the mesh are selected. The parts are usually logical. Like head and face, hands, clothes, body etc.

Assuming you don’t have a material, separate mesh or maps, you can just go by logic and start seleting parts of the mesh until you have a all parts that are not overlapping.

Selecting all UVs and go to UV/Seams from Islands and then in face select mode in the viewport you can select by the islands (ctrl L) which will maybe help in some cases.

At any rate you want to arrive at a place where you have a material assigned to each UV map group - if you will.

After that though, pretty much leave it alone. Just go through the process of assigning the image maps to the materials.

source app? i guess tron 2.0 an old 2003 game that uses entirely unique formats. export format, well i guess .FBX to get there though was a pain. i had to rip the .LTB models then i had to use LTB2X to convert it to .X (directx) then i had to use milkshape 3d 1.8.5 to convert that to .FBX (old fbx though) then i had to use autodesk fbx converter 2013 to make it newer. then i could get it in blender. as for settings, for the ltb2x it always outputs a uv map and for milkshape (i dont use milkshape at all so i dont know) and autodesk it pretty simple i didnt have to change anything just click convert.

You’ve included the file in another thread but not this one


And as suspected, the UV’s seem to be usable despite being stacked on top of each other.


Armature has keyframes, could delete those from the dope sheet. Applying the pose as rest pose, pose mode ctrl+A, and then applying object rotations and scale, the armature can be used for posing.

What aren’t useful are the bone names and matching vertex group names for modeling and rigging tools if you need to use symmetry while working
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/rigging/armatures/bones/editing/naming.html#naming-conventions