a few months a go i started to learn how to model. Now i have plenty of models made but now i am at the part of making UV’s for them and texturing them. I tried to learn maya UV unwrapping methods but it was all mumbo jumbo to me . I heard of a plugin called Unwrella which has a auto UV method which does it for you, and other features which make uving easy. Can someone tell me if they have used this plug in and how well it works, before i purchase it? Also i have seen videos of BodyPaint 3d which lots of artists seam to use for texturing, can someone tell me how well that software works and if its not good than what should i use?
thanks for reading my questions i hope someone can shine some light on UVing and Texturing for me , and maybe recommend some 3rd party software to make my life easier, i don’t mind spending a few bucks as i have spent quite a lot on this venture already.
You really should learn to UV map objects. I’m not familiar with Unwrella but chances are it’ll mostly be useful or organic objects. With non-organic stuff it’s a good practice to overlap UVs. This way you save grid space and get better performance for using less materials.
I’m not familiar with BodyPaint either but I’m guessing you still have to unwrap the object before painting.
I’ve only worked with Maya for a short while so I’m not familiar with it’s UV tools. Perhaps the best option would be to do some research on the available 3rd party tools. When you see the one that suits you best and are certain that Maya’s tools can’t satisfy your needs, then get it.
I’d recommend ZBrushes UVMaster plugin. It’s been the best one for me so far. Works for both organic and non-organic models. In the later case you can just move the automatically created UVs by hand in Maya if you want them overlapping. In best cases one can just automatically create UV seams based on ambient occlusion and UVMaster unwraps it all for you.
Youtube and Vimeo offers free tutorials for this plugin, good luck!
Master uvmapping. A large level probably needs a multitude of different methods, some areas will benefit from having a texture atlas, and having your uv’s laid out in certain ways, other areas will benefit from having some flat textures down and then having details baked and painted in photoshop or zbrush or whatever. Using a combination of different aproaches leads you to the final result, since at this time you can’t get away from uv mapping, theres no reason not to learn it, and get really good at it, as with 3d graphics its pretty much a basic skill.