Hi, I am having a lot of difficulty UV unwrapping this object and I am not sure why, I am wondering can anyone help in knowing what the best way to UV unwrap this shape would be.
I have been trying for hours and I can’t seem to UV unwrap it well, it either has too many UV islands or ends up with a strange shape not the best for creating a texture, I would need the UV’s squarer to create a texture but using follow active quads don’t work how I want.
Project from view is great is some perspectives but would not work because of the shape of the object, does anyone know how to UV unwrap a shape like this. For some reason it won’t unwrap in a square like shape/island, any help would be great thanks.
What is the purpose of this model?
Will it be uniquely textured with baked textures eg. in Substance Painter or maybe textured using tileable textures, or some mix?
Okay yeah sorry, it’s for a video game prop that I want to eventually somehow import into source 1.
Thanks, gorion103 for your time and help much appreciate it, that looks good, much better than what I could come up with, I have a question is it possible to somehow have less UV islands,
it seems impossible.
Probably going to use 2 textures for the window frame and a small texture for the glass, at maybe 1024x1024 each and maybe 64x64 for the glass. Going to create the textures in gimp.
I currently don’t have substance painter or any type of 3d texture creating program other than Blender.
The main prop is a type of window and the section that is giving me trouble is the base of the window
The thing is I had a mirror modifier, but I want to UV unwrap both sides the left and right not just one side.
This is a picture of UV unwrap I kind of want it to turn out but that is still not right I want it more square-ish and not so deformed. I will be texturing it using gimp in 2D as I said I don’t have a 3d texture program.
This is updated blend file which contains the window main frame, the cover and the lower base. I kind of have the main frame of the window UV unwrapped to how I kind of want it so I wouldn’t really UV unwrap the main frame, but the lower base of the window is giving me a bad time, too many islands when unwrapped and I don’t understand why. maybe with better context, more help can still be given.
any more help will be much appreciated, as this is driving me kind crazy spent many hours 5 or 6 hours trying to UV unwrap just a single section, the section I sent you. I think part of that time was spent in remaking the whole mesh again trying to get rid of as many triangles as I could, but it didn’t work Blender don’t seem to help me much in how I want it to be unwrapped.
Hi thanks, I can’t really answer you because I can’t see the UV islands. I would have thought any of the cube projection or follow active quads would work for my situation but it don’t seem to unwrap at all well, in fact they are terrible functions that don’t work for me.
Though not at all like the unwrap you show above how are you doing that? are you using seams? or what does the UV islands look like in your examples. I am looking for something that does not have a lot of UV islands does that make sense.
This is what happens when I use Cube map projection a total mess and unusable UV islands. there must be something else to cube map projection that I don’t know about.
and this is what happens when I use follow active quads again a total mess and unusable UV islands but how are you using it, there must be something else to using this function that again I don’t know about or is not made clear in the interface to me.
compressing a file do you mean the cogwheel in this browser? in the top right? if I click it, it shows hide details or build polls, again what do you mean compress file? or do you mean in blender, pack resources?
I need clarity please on any of the things that you have said thanks.
Oh yes… sometimes just resetting the UVs first helps and in this case i followed active quads after cube projection… and yes just enableing compress in blender (by the cogwheel for individial files or as standard via Blender Preferences → Save & Load)…
And the simple cubic projection may suit if you model just has repeativ feature… or you have select and disconnect or mark seams for the individual ribs…
So playing with some automatic or doing int manualy…
Edit: bad typo… meant rip, ridge or gill, serration (no native english speaker here) … this partitions in the model…
Okay thanks Okidoki, I found the compress file in blender under Blender Preferences save & load under relative paths so that is okay now.
On to my problem with this object, I tried to follow as you said, so I reset UV’s, I then used cube projection first and after used follow active quads and this is my results.
Totally not usable, this don’t look like your results at all, so there must be something else. Also, I can’t see your UV islands, so I don’t even know what you have unwrapped really.
If anything, I would just use the UV Unwrap with seams that I have done which is the result below but not great for what I want, the shape is totally deformed, and I don’t understand why that is. The topology of this shape maybe is wrong and that is why it won’t unwrap correctly and is deformed? but it is just really a cube so I don’t understand
Again, I need help trying to unwrap this object does anyone have any idea in a simple way in how to do it correctly, may blender just is not right for something like this but then again
I have seen more complex shapes than this unwrapped in blender, I must be missing something.
Hi Okidoki, I am grateful you have taken the time to help me, and I do appreciate it, just to clarify,
this model is to be imported into source 1 an old game engine that can still look decent, if taken time to create assets. So, I will be using a 2D texture sheet created in gimp or some art program after UV unwrap and there can’t be any overlapping UV’s
I like the top half of the Unwrap that is great but the lower section of the unwrap has some errors for what I need. It has overlapping UV maps and that is just not going to work for me.
The sections in blue are over lapping UV’s I am not sure why that happens when it is unwrapped does anyone know why? overlapping UV’s are undesirable in my situation.
I should say I am a beginner and have very little knowledge in UV unwrapping.
also what is SSS? is that Subsurface under base color in the principled BSDF material?
So i guess hard work… selected one rip with front and back selected face and similar to project from view (front)… selected the inner ring played arround and rectified it with TexTools… the outer one has also a extruded polygon… so fiddle with this…so this is only for one rip…
Thanks Okidoki and I am grateful but this is driving me pretty crazy and a bit angry to be honest as I can’t even move on to the next step until this is done so I am stuck here wasting time…but really no amount of UV work is going to fix the over lapping UV’s using the above solution. It would be way too much to do for just a simple mesh.
again I gone back to my original UV unwrap and unwrapped both parts it can work but the shape is so distorted why is blender doing this, there is fundamentally something not right with blender and how I am using it.
why can’t blender follow the shape of my mesh but make it more square like for texturing, why is this shape such a problem does anyone know. I could split it into more islands using seams, but it does not work out in the end and by the end there is just way too many islands, which for 2D texturing is terrible.
And I am just a beginner so I don’t know what to do.
So i guess hard work… selected one rip with front and back selected face and similar to project from view (front)… selected the inner ring played arround and rectified it with TexTools… the outer one has also a extruded polygon… so fiddle with this…so this is only for one rip…
Okay thanks, I missed this reply sorry, that looks good and pretty straight. I could try and follow what you done but my only issue with that is there is going to be so many islands. I can work with many islands I guess but then my texture will somehow have to cover the seams and I don’t know how that will look over that many islands.
I might give it a try if this is the only solution.
That’s a general problem in UV-unwrapping… ther are 3 dimension in the object and you have to make 2 -dimensional map… so you are loosing one… it’s a general undecidable problem and need individual solutions…
as i said it’s a general problem other apps may have different unwrapping methods which may suit better in this case… or not…
Think about this like that:
Imagine you build this as model in real… let’s say out of wood. You may just cut some semi-rectangular peaces out of a flat wood panel and then glue them together… fine…
And now you have to paint it… now there is this problem that maybe your brush doesn’t fit into thos tiny little places… so what now… ??? It might be a better idea to just glue just one of those inner parts with one of those outer parts together and then paint them before glueing the whle thing together…
So maybe you jast have to break the model into parts… put them a little more apart and then the unwrapping may be better… and then glue merge it at last…
Okay something else: This also depends on the workflow you wanna paint this… in 3D or with a “nice layout” in 2D… and of course the direction more handpainted or more realistic…
Here is also anoth idea: This is simple cube projection… after i adde one seam and “stretched” the model in a specific way… and selected the overlapping parts (two) and moved it a bit… (seeing at least on other overlap afte ri made this…)
How it’s done:
Make a looping seam along Y, slect the inner faces (poly rings), group them, transform pivot to individual origins, scale along y by 0.5, select all, pivot to curso (0,0,0), scale along y by 4… smart unwrap. controll UV… reverse the manipulations (1/4 and 2 fro the group) …
Okay thanks Okidoki I am grateful for all the help you have provided it means a lot to me.
Okay I tried to follow your first way of splitting them up into lots of little sections.
It has kind of got a lot of islands now, but I guess this might be the best way. maybe when it comes to texturing the seams won’t be too visible. I am going to choose this option
I tried to follow your other example of using smart UV Unwrap and I could not follow it, I am just a beginner, but I tried. here was what I ended up with.
Also the seam at the top like that running across the mesh in the example of the smart UV Unwrap might not work too well for me, i wish it did work, but really if this was a prop for source 1 HL2 the prop in game, the player would be able to see the whole of the top of the mesh, where that seam is as they can see the whole window frame from top to bottom, even with glass there and they would probably see that seam.
but then I realized, I got a million seams in the other one, the one I 'm going to go with so I don’t know really.
I think the stitching method you provided in your first example is the way I am going to go, even though with loads of UV islands, i hope it can turn out okay.
Hi Okidoki, I have for the last 4 to 5 hours UV unwrapped the mesh and placed how I want. There is a lot of unused space not sure what to do about that or how to fix it. As of now I like it as I have moved all the islands around to make sense but the big problem, I feel that I will encounter is the number of seams I have. I will try my best to make a basic texture that does not have any standout details and then maybe in Blender use the texture paint to fix the texture.
Though I can’t help but think that there could have been a better easier way, maybe the way you showed in your other example, but I did not understand it. Anyway will see how this turns out in the next few days.
If it suits your workflow… As i mentioned: ir depends also on the texture you want and on your painting workflow…
Sometime one have to try something else before going back…
Maybe rotate half of the n-shaped islands to get u-shaped ones and then “interlock” (not overlapping) them?
You are right I should have rotated and interlock the islands, that would save some space which is good for a better texture sheet. At the moment I don’t see what I could fill that space with as the main frame is now its own separate texture sheet.
Using the UV grid as a guide the window frame had smaller squares, so I had to make the lower window portion use up 2048x2048, while the window frame use 1024x1024 to make them both more even using the UV grid as a guide. I didn’t see any other way, than to do it like that. I just could not make the frame and the lower portion all fit on one UV map, someone with better skills would have done this, quicker and much better but I am just a beginner.
