a quik ? about uv's

Technical Support Basics & Interface
1

When I uv unwrap my wolf. I get a very distorted map. And I was wondering why.
The wolf has seams like this. The part Im interested in is the one around the face and chest.

uv1.jpg494×668 91 KB

uv2.jpg451×646 92.9 KB

when I unwrap it, it looks like this


is there a reason it is so distorted around the ears?

2

If I unwrap from view< I get this

uv4.jpg485×670 171 KB

is it that this is just the way to do it?

3

is it that this is just the way to do it?
Not if you want overlapping faces (indicated below). You need more seams to take into account the nose which currently is all squashed up

Attachments

uv4.jpeg434×600 68.9 KB

4

It’s the nose. UV unwrapping is like trying to flatten out a 3d object – like trying to make a paper map of the world. Without seams there is distortion, but seams lead to a disjointed UV map. That being said – my point is, the dog’s nose is like an american football, but you put a seam through the middle, now, when the football is flattened, the pointy end (nose of the ball) is going to smoosh in the center, and the outer edges are goint to stretch – similar to what you see in your original UV

The quickest solution is to cut the dog in half the long way

5

Thanks Richard,
I guess I needed to go a bit further with my description. It is easy enough to edit the uv to get rid of the overlapping edges. And with a little stretch minimizing I can fix the nose.
I had been following along with Kents tutorial on cgcookie about realistic faces. and when he just uv unwraped his head the map came out nice and symmetrical, where as mine didnt without going to the unwrap from view mode. I was just wondering why mine was like that.

6

The culprit is very likely the uv method

Try this :
-select all and press U -> Unwrap.
-now in the operator panel (bottom of the toolshelf , in the left panel) , or press F6 , change the UV method from Angle Based to Conformal (or vice versa depending on what’s there for you) and you should see the UV being fixed instead of this odd deformation
I had a very similar problem, and changing the UV method fixed it.

On some version of Blender (possibly in the stable 2.64a version too) , the angle based and conformal method were accidentally mixed, so you may additionally want to get a more recent version of Blender like one from the Buildbot (or tomorrow probably the Blender 2.65 official release)

edit : Blender 2.65 is available already :

7

Thanks @Sanctuary
That was the solution to the problem. Im very grateful.