Hi all. I’m kind of lost when it comes to UVs. How do you figure out when your base mesh is ready for UV mapping? When is the mesh ready? Thanks.
You have to realize that any changes that you make to topology after your UVs have been done will require you to go back and remap some if not all of them.
I’m sure that there are people who would disagree with me here, but the workflow I would suggest would be to do all your texturing with polypaint and to unwrap UVs and export textures only when the whole model is visually finished. Of course you will have to be working at a high enough polygon resolution to support your texture detail, but these days that’s not usually a problem.
Thanks Huan. What about when using normal maps? I watched a tutorial where they UV a lower resolution mesh then sculpt more detail, create a normal map in Zbrush and then put it onto the lower res mesh. I want to know how to do this because I have a zombie character that I would like to animate, but I want this character to have some sculpted detail.
Do UVs using the UVmaster first. Learn how. Documentation is fine.
This plugin works on lower definition clone. So copy UVs there (a button down) and select your hi def tool and paste UVs. Now you have UVs on your zombi tool. Go to the lower level and ask zb to bake the tangent normal map. Clone it (button). This will send it to the left side panel (textures), export from there.
Have in mind that zbrush flips UVs vertically so its a good choice to flip UVs of the model vertically before exporting the mesh. (UVs palette, bottom) otherwise you have to flip the texture on a photo editor or elsewhere. Have fun.
Similar methods for displacement maps.
Having UVs you should also bake texture from polypaint. Similar again but zbrush will export this map with the obj, you don’t need to clone it except you like to work on this in Ps and import it to zb again.
There is a lot of good documentation here
http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/TOC
Well, I’m not the most experienced user when it comes to displacement and normal maps, but I think that my method still works there as well. Generally you want to keep a few levels of subdivision while you’re working on your model so that when you reach the point where you’ve got your polypaint and your geometry looking right at the high subdivision levels you can go back down to your lowest level and unwrap the UVs… Then you can go back up to the high subdivision levels and export whatever maps you need.
Now you’ve got to keep in mind that you’ve got to have your topology right before you unwrap, but you’ve got to have your topology right to do just about anything so that shouldn’t add anything to the workflow as a whole.
My full workflow is as follows:
I start in Sculptris, getting my form right in an environment where I don’t have to worry about topology. (I occasionally export into ZBrush to take advantage of transpose and some of the other sweet features that Sculptris doesn’t have yet, but I always bring it back to sculpt.)
Once the form is right, I bring it into ZBrush and retopologise.
When the topology is right I subdivide it so that I can begin working on detailing and textures.
When I have the model looking exactly as I want it I unwrap my UVs at the lowest subdivision level and export my maps at the highest subdivision level.
I hope that makes some sense. I’m no pro, (yet,) but this has worked for me.
It makes total sense to me. I don’t have Sculptris. I understand your workflow, but am yet to understand UV unwrapping. I’ve watched and read on the subject and still can’t seem to do it. I’ll keep on trying. Thanks again.
Stick with it. When I started working in 3D this the available tools for UV unwrapping were really dismal and it was years before I worked with anything but procedural textures. I think that once you get your head around how a UV map actually works things will fall into place.
Thank you. I will read the documentation. and probably refer back to your post for the steps to follow. One question though. Can UV master be used for meshes created in an application like Maya? I ask because that’s where my confusion lies, unwrapping, UV editor, sewing and relaxing and fitting it all on 1,0. That’s where I have a hard time.
I will stick with it. I was messing around with UV Master last night. Still don’t really know what’s going on but will continue with it again tonight when I get home from my job.