[3dEE]

here's some UV tips. hope it helps someone

- select the mesh and turn on symmetry (you might need to recalculate symmetry). this will mirror the 'mark texture seam' command


- select edges and 'mark texture seam' (selection > mark texture seam; shortcut 'HOME'). note: this is a toggle if you want to unmark a seam, select it and press 'home' again



- create UV proxy (materials menu)


- any holes you got (eyes etc.) are gonna be messed up. select a border edge and 'fill hole' (modeify > fill hole).


- in the UV 3D window select the proxy and materials > unwrap UV proxy

- with holes filled by an ngon you get much better unwrap. you mite want to 'pin' these vertices now. select them and F9 (just as 'mark texture seam' pin is a toggle).


- if you had some holes that you didn't cap you could now turn on materials > live UV unwraping. fixing the collapsed part is a combo of moving a vertex pinning it and so on. get the desired shape for that part, all vertices pinned. note: you need to get just one half right!

[3dEE]

- you can unwrap the proxy again (in the UV 3D window select the proxy and materials > unwrap UV proxy)

- now that you have one side unwrapped as you want, select an edge on the center loop and 'recalculate symmetry'


- select all the faces on the side you want to get mirrored and 'symmetrize selection'. this will mirror your UVs.


- if you want to tweak your UVs turn off live UV unwrapping, turn on soft selection, and taweak away. since your still in symmetry mode - everything is mirrored

- if for some reason you want to have asymmetrical UVs, you can select the proxy and go to the 'object properties' and uncheck symmetry (you might have to be in perspective view in order to access the properties)

- if you want to get rid of a seam, going to the perspective view and selecting the seam and 'mark texture seam' (HOME) won't get you the desired result in the UV 3D view, nothing's gonna happen there. in the perspective view you will remove the seam tho. basically you would need to delete the proxy and unwrap again, but you'll lose all the work you've done so far.
what you can do is select the pairs of vertices on the seam and merge them.




- now unwrap the proxy again (in the UV 3D window select the proxy and materials > unwrap UV proxy)

- symmetrize selection to mirror


- for gaming if you want to texture just half of the face - have the UVs stack; select the center loop and 'break'.



- select any face on the side you want to flip and 'expand selection' ("shift + '+'").

- move the pivot on the centerLoop

- open numerical editor (set coordinates to manipulator) and scale -1 in appropriate axis.

[ploon]

Thanks so much 3dEE that is truly helpful, explains a lot of really useful bits - mirroring, filling holes... Excellent cant wait to get home and try this out. Cheers!!!

btw I like your button layout - uhh you havent done a tutorial on that too? heheh

[Lewi]

Fantastic tutorial, lots of good tips, thankyou for spending the time to make this. I think this should be a sticky and on Janimatics Wiki.

[lovisx]

the symmetry part was really amazing for me.

[mhovland]

Just remember that having stacked UV's will mean the normal map will not be calculated correctly. You will need to pull the normal map before you stack the UV's, and then work some mojo in photoshop to make sure everything looks good in engine.

[janimatic]

very good tips 3dee !
i'd be happy to host a mirror of your tips on the wiki, if you wish....

[justa_newbie]

yes, thanks for those tips, 3dEE. I haven't used Silo2 for it's UVs yet (use UVLayout), but
some of what you've shown looks pretty handy.

cheers.


justa_newbie

[Toadie]

thanks! this helps me a lot

[the grinch]

3dEE,

thanks muchly for these tips, Ive been trying to figure this out for a while now. I get good results when working on an open mesh, but cutting up a closed mesh like a head, has been a tad frustrating.


cheers

[Moog]

Wow. Thanks so much 3dEE. There was some stuff I was holding up doing, since I had problems with earlier versions, but when I get home I'm definitely going to give this work flow a try.

[ravells]

Thank you 3dee!

Superb tutorial!

Ravs

[Mario]

Mario

[dasch]

Superb UV-walkthrough, 3DEE!
Many thanks.

[Razael kane]

I am very new to Silo..
I looked at this and it's awesome... i did a small box with a texture on it.. Now when I export the object as a .OBJ file or a .3DS file and import into Blender 2.43 there is no UV or any texture for that matter.

How does on save the texture in Silo? or Export it with the object..


I also own Lightwave 9 if that will be of any help.
I just want to export my UV mapped model and texture.

Sorry for my VERY stupid question.
Thanks

[ravells]

You need to save the silo file as an object and use something like UV mapper to create the texture map...that works for me

ravs

[rootdown]

Is this workflow still valid for 2.0.5? I'm trying to symmetrize my selections in the UV editor and it's no good.

[3dEE]

yes. i just tried it out in 2.0.5, i had no problems acivating symmetry, or doing symmetrize selection.
as far as i know the only thing that is not the same is you can not perform merge in UV any more.

[rootdown]

Aha, took me some tweaking with it but I finally got it to work. Thanks!

[peterpan]

Good tute thank you