Help making a UV Face Layout

[Gwyvern]

hello, for the past week i have been working on a project that im using to expand my abilities a bit, and while skipping the irrelevant details, im stuck on unwrapping the model for proper texturing

 

i have all my seams marked and all that stuff, but when i hit unwrap everything turns out...for lack of a better one word descriptor...retarded

 

the main issue, is that faces and groups that are bigger in the 3d view, end up taking more space on the UV unwrap than tiny, insignificant faces, for instance, part of an iron sight ends up being bigger than part of the body of the weapon, also lines that are perfectly straight and even end up getting bent randomly for absolutely no reason, which will make it quite difficult to texture this thing as i wish, so any links to tutorials or personal assistance would be GREATLY appreciated

 

thanks for any replies

[LHammonds]

FYI - We have a 3D modeling section.

 

I will assume you are talking about Blender...which is something I'm a bit familiar with.

 

Using seams is not always something you want to do and usually, you have to use multiple ways of unwrapping to get the desired effect for what you are trying to accomplish.

 

Guns are typically box-shaped and rather flat. Using a "Project from View" while looking at the side will give you great results for those sides...however, the other sides will squish down to a single pixel smudge. You will then need to select those particular faces and unwrap them a different way...or continue using "Project from View" if that works for you.

 

When unwrapping objects using seams, you have to tinker around a big to get the best results...which is the minimum amount of seams yet still a workable surface without too much squishing and stretching.

 

Examples:

 

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee11/Conan_Lon/Blender/UVMap_Circle1.jpg

 

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee11/Conan_Lon/Blender/UVMap_Circle2.jpg

 

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee11/Conan_Lon/Blender/UVMap_Circle3.jpg

 

These examples also illustrate a key balance. More seams may help reduce the stretching / squishing of the texture but it may become too hard to texture if the object is no longer recognizable or causes too many problems with seams and trying to make the texture "line up" to reduce coloration issues.

 

However, this is all "old school" in that the UV Layout has a close relationship with the 2D texture painter. But if you can paint directly on the 3D model, the UV Layout no longer matters other than being proportional...which is where "Smart Projects" comes into play. If you can 3D paint, you simply use Smart Projects and walk away...only spending seconds on the UV. But this also makes it just about impossible for any 2D artist to work directly with the 2D texture.

 

LHammonds

[Gwyvern]

hmm project from view...

 

this...is gona take a while...

 

heh... thank you for the help

Edited December 3, 2010 by Gwyvern

[LHammonds]

And here is a related post with almost the exact same issue. Unwrapping gunz!