Help With UV upwrap

Support Materials and Textures
1

So i am modelin a a hand for school. The model itself is really good but now i have to texture it. And when i mark seams and unwrap it Blender makes my fingers look all small. it doesnt keep the size of the mesh. so when i tried to move the UVs to match the image it destorts the image. So i am not sure what i am doing wrong here. I must be missing something. Any tips would help,

thanks.

PS
i will up load images if needed.

2

Blender will try to make the UV layout as a close match to your mesh, but it can only go so far depending on how you have seamed the model.Without being allowed to tear apart your mesh, Blender an only unpeel your plan and squash it flat like an orange peel… in order to prevent “humps” the flattened image is going to distort somewhat.

Your fingers are cyllindrical. If you simplify this thinking and make them something of a box… this would make each finger four times its normal width! (top, two sides and underneath). Each finger has this issue and they all want to spread out over the same space. Blender tries to even things out by shrinking them down to make room for each other.

If Blender makes your fingers skinnier, it will also try to make them shorter. Blender is trying to make the individual mesh squares maintain their shape as close as possible to your plan.

Not sure what you mean by “when i tried to move the UVs to match the image” as this could be a number of things… perhaps a screenshot to clarify?

3

Here is what i have as of now.

http://blackribbonstudio.com/Render.png http://blackribbonstudio.com/UV_now.png

this i have seams around the hand and then also around each finger and finger nail. I found i didnt get much distortion when i seamed each finger. But also becomes a pain to texure it all. I also grabed each point in teh UV editer and moved them around to match the image. I hope that makes more sense.

Now when i mark my seam JUST around the hand and not the fingers. This is what i get.

http://blackribbonstudio.com/Seam_UV.png
http://blackribbonstudio.com/UV_reg.png

the fingers are ALOT smaller then they should be and i dont get it.

i was thinking maybe its bc i am going halfway down the mesh and the image is only the top but it still doesnt really line up. Also i might have moved my hand. so i am not using the same image as i modeled reference

You can also see that the wrist and palms look bigger

4

Your unwrap looks great. Rather than trying to match the photo, you should try projecting it unto the mesh and baking it into the UV texture. I believe blender has a way of doing this. Although you first should be using the create image/ 1024x1024 UV Test Grid, to see where the distortion is.

Also you don’t seem to be using pinning (select UV vertice and hit p) along with the Live Unwrap.

5

So as of now…i took a screen shot of the mesh and then used that and moved all the UV points to the match the vertes in the mesh haha this is not a good way of doing it…

I am not sure how to use the pins and live unwrap. Im not sure waht that does…

I also dont really know how to project it and bake it…Do you mean like use the UV project modifer?

6

I haven’t fully gone into all the ins and outs, so my response here is probably going to get someone correcting me in a big way, but since that is a good thing (because then you’ll get what you are after) here goes. Basically, load the image you want into the UV editor. Then, in top view (looking down at the hand), use the hand as a background image.position the hand over the image of itself and use “project from view”. In the UV editor, you will see the hand mapped in a way where it is not “unwrapped” as such, but a to-scale version of the hand (in proportion to that view). You simple use G and S to reposition the hand in UV over its image. The hand now takes on a perfect match of the texture from that angle.

That’s the basic principle. Of course, there is a little more to it than that because the texture now goes through to the other side. There are ways to split up UV maps into different sections and join them all together in pieces… although that’s where someone should now step in.

But before they do… have a go at what I said above and let’s see if you get the idea.

7

Yea that is what i tried before and it worked great. But i would only get that view of the UVs and i would not be able to get teh bottom of the hand. :frowning: I dont know how to be able to spilt that up. unless, i am able to bank the image to the mesh then do it all over again but from the bottom view. maybe?

Also i have notice that when i render the mesh the image on the hand isnt as good quality as the image in the image editor. Is there a way to fix this or is it the way it is?

thanks guys. Blender is awesome and the community is even better :slight_smile:

8

Just bake a projection of the top and bottom in two different images. Than combine them in Gimp or Photoshop. What resolution is the picture?

9

you may want to check out this two vids from cgcookie:


10

5100 px by 3300 px 300 DPI… its a REALLY high res image. but for some reason the hair on the arm doesnt look as good. I konw its a flat image and the down grade isnt much but i still can tell its not as detailed.

11

So, i just did something pretty interesting. I made my seams. then looked from the top and then unwraped my UVs with the “project from view” method and then it kept all the UVs in proportion and also cut the UVs with the seam so then i could move the bottom of the hand and fingers to where i needed them. Hope that makes sense and help. If not ill show some images bc i think this will help alot.

12

Yes, note that…

  • When you “project from view” it is the 3D view background image, not the UV editor, which you line things up from. (to clarify)
  • Seams are mainly used for “automatic” unwrapping. You can get several separated areas of UV area by selecting the faces you want and then unwrapping (e.g. project from view). Basically, unwrapping only affects selected faces. Use CTRL+L un UV editor to select all of an “island” (select at least one vertice of that island in UV editor first).

A few links I think you might like: