Mesh Unwrapping

Support Basics & Interface
1

Hi folks, I’m just getting back into blender after a long hiatus, and I’ve been following and online course at Lynda by George Maestri on version 2.6, using the same version as his.

I’m at a point on mapping textures in the UV Editor to a basic cube. The instructions are to first select certain edges and apply Mesh/Edges/Mark Seam. I select the same edges as shown in the video. Then the instructions are to select all faces and then apply Mesh/UV/Unwrap. When I do this I get a mess of meshes in the UV Editor. Here are screen grabs of the results he gets, followed by what I get:

Clipboard02.jpg860×616 235 KB

Clipboard01.jpg959×586 238 KB

Does anyone have any idea why this is happening? I initially worked with a course supplied file, but tried the same with a new scene ad got the same result. Thanks for any info on this.

2

That’s because you have not placed a seam on every required edges, so the unwrapper is puzzled and does that bad unwrap.

I have not watched this tutorial, but to obtain the unwrap result from the screenshot of the video, here are where you should have the seams :

http://i.imgur.com/i7mxjLS.jpg http://i.imgur.com/xYCOzUR.jpg

Then select all -> U -> Unwrap and you will obtain the same result as in the screenshot from the video

3

Also make sure the object has uniform scale before unwrapping. Best to have it 1,1,1. Ctrl+A -> scale.

4

Thanks very much for your reply (you too JA12!). It turns out the video at some point edited out the part about the edge between both sides, so the narrator says to pick 1,2 and 3 on one side, then turn the box around and pick 4,5, and 6. Reviewing the video, he had initially picked a top edge between both sides, which somehow did not visually remain selected as he chose the subsequent edges. However, upon further examination shows the bottom edge selected. In the image below where I point to the top, that’s what he visually selected, but you can probably see that the bottom was selected, and is more obvious when the seams are marked.


I did not notice that because following the video it was not visually shown that he had chosen that bottom edge, it was edited out. Needless, this really screwed me up as I visually followed the video to the letter.

So thanks again for your help with this, now I can move on with the tutorial. :slight_smile:

Edit: Upon following the video again, apparently the top edge was the correct one, not the bottom (even though it is visually marked as a seam!), because the selection came in “upside-down”. So Now I will repeat the damn exercise using the top edge. Sheesh!

5

Well, OK, it turns out the bottom edge was the edge he had marked as a seam, but apparently the video was edited so the faces showed the correct way (rotated 90°), because when I finally finished the tutorial, the box maps were upside-down while in the video they were right-side up. So, in one way it’s good because you become aware of mesh orientation specifics, but on the other, coming in “cold” into Blender after so many years this video tutorial really screwed me up. It’s rather odd because up until this point the videos have been totally consistent and I was able to follow along without a hitch. However from here on in when something isn’t right, if it still isn’t right the second time I do it, then I’ll know the video is screwed up.