Please help...would really be appreciated - texturing/ 3ds max

[jofflumb]

Hi,

I am going to model a bird, with its wings closed/ flat to the body. does anyone know any tutorials to help me texture this shape. I am guessing ill have to use unwrap uvw but I am quite inexperienced in that area,

Any help would be great
Thanks

[Nukie]

If you can spare € 5,- you can automate (http://www.raylightgames.com/xrayunwrap/xrayunwrap.htm) this step.

Otherwise I suggest you check out the Unwrap UWV tutorials inside Max. They explain you the process step by step, and furthermore there are a lot of tutorials on the web.

I also suggest to search the Autodesk website. They have a tutorial on this matter if I'm not mistaking.

[poopipe]

this xray unwrap you've mentioned a couple of times..

Am I missing something or is it exactly the same as using pelt except you don't have to click the relax button?

[Perversonality]

It's very similar to pelt but you can use editable poly to select the seams which makes things a lot quicker. It's a very nice tool but if you are happy with pelt then you won't get much of a benefit out of it

[poopipe]

ah right. 5 dollahs seems reasonable - specially when you consider what people charge for some unwrappy tools

Probably wont bother myself, I like to have the unwrapper window open so's i can select stuff in there too

[Linc]

or just use UVLayout Demo, it's free forever. Its flattening algorithm is more accurate and faster than Max's relax.

[Nukie]

Perversonality is right. Only thing is that it makes unwrapping a lot quicker. I like it because of that because 1) I hate the whole unwrapping thing and 2) I have more time to spend on other things (like texturing).

[Perversonality]

I bought Xray Unwrap and now use it in conjunction with UVW unwrap so it has become an additional tool rather than the only thing I use to unwrap. The workflow is that you select your seams in editable poly/mesh then hit the unwrap button in Xray. It adds a UVW mod to the top of the object's stack and auto-sizes and spaces the parts including opening the UV edit window, so then you can continue to work on refining the UVs with normal Max tools if you want/need to

[poopipe]

Im not keen on separate apps like headus as the time involved in exporting, reimporting usually negates any time saving you might get over the max unwrapper.
edge selection is no real chore in the unwrapper - you've got loop/ring buttons although it would be nice to use keyboard shortcuts for that (maybe i can set them up, haven't tried)

flattenign wise, I find a single click with relax set to face angles, amount 1 with 100 iterations is enough for most situations. It'd be nice to have a better pack algorithm than the standard max one I'll grant but I still doubt you're looking at a 1 click solution for optimal layouts in any of these packages.

who'd have thought I'd turn into a luddite eh...

[Perversonality]

Who'd have thought that I would use a plug in...?! :D The pack algorithm is definitely total arse in Max though... The only other advantage of Xray over pelt is that it does multiple parts in one go so scaling is consistent without having to muck about. However, its own packing routine doesn't leave any space between parts so you still have to move things around if you are going to render to texture with padding... No one solution is perfect in other words!

[poopipe]

discordant scaling is easily fixed by selecting all shells and hitting the relax button with the above settings.

its amazing how many shortcuts you find for the horrible jobs