Finally starting to learn uv mapping/unwrapping just have a few questions

Support Basics & Interface
1

Okay, so I’m away from my computer right now, but I wanted to ask this stuff while it’s on my mind:

I have a model that I’ve sculpted some surface imperfections and damage on to, and I want to bake it down into normal/bump maps.

I started going at it yesterday pretty much with only the knowledge of how to create seams in the right places to minimize stretching (I haven’t baked anything yet). And for some reason, I started aligning everything to x and y, making it so that all old the islands are pretty uniformly rectangular. I have no idea if this is a good idea or not, I just kind of started doing it, and I was really in the zone, so I didn’t even question what I was doing until this morning.

Now that all of that is out of the way, I want to ask a few questions:

  1. should I have aligned everything like that? the model is nowhere near rectangular; and it could be best described as the shape of the end of a syringe needle.

  2. should I have baked the textures first, and then edited the islands to fit more uniformly?

  3. are there any things I should’ve done before starting the whole unwrapping/baking process?

thanks in advance, and any advice is greatly appreciated!

2

Hi,

Do you have the stretching visualization turned on?

Also, editing the uvs by hand is a giant time waster and the computer knows how to minimize the stretching with the seams you have created. When you edit the uvs by hand you can creat unnecessary stretching.

You dont need perfectly rectangular islands, but you do have to unwrap before baking.

1 Like
3

hey sorry for responding so late! I didn’t even know there was a way to turn on stretching visualization. I’ll have to do that. thanks for the advice!