topic Re: I need help with UVW Unwrap in 3ds Max Modeling Forum

I need help with UVW Unwrap

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 09:36:58 GMT

Hi, as you can see in the photos, I've modeled a coffee table, and now I want to unwrap it.

The thing is that when I peel it gets weirdly unwrapped causing distortions on the checker map. Could the topology be wrong and because of it I have hard time unwrapping it? If so, how can I make the topology proper or how can I unwrap these side table pieces properly?

Re: I need help with UVW Unwrap

10DSpace — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 14:24:39 GMT

@Anonymous

There are a couple of ways to improve your unwrap. Using "Relax" (Tools>Relax) on the selected wonky UV islands and/or using Quick Peel on them. Sometimes you have to try both before you find what works best for your particular mesh and islands. Also, to avoid stretching it usually helps to break the wonky UV islands into smaller chunks and then apply Relax or Quick peel on the smaller islands. You will also get better use of your UV tile space with smaller islands. Hope this helps.

Re: I need help with UVW Unwrap

10DSpace — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 15:14:36 GMT

@Anonymous

Quick Planar Map can also work well on selections that are (obviously) mostly but not necessarily completely coplanar; sometimes you need to follow this up with "Relax".

Re: I need help with UVW Unwrap

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 17:23:07 GMT

If I try to Relax it, this happens. Could I do it with the straighten option? I ve tried that too but the spacing gets really messy

Re: I need help with UVW Unwrap

10DSpace — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 17:45:18 GMT

@Anonymous

Not being sure exactly which polys you have unwrapped where, I think the easiest way for me to help you would be if you post your Max file here. Please make sure to post it as Max 2020 or earlier version as I do not have Max 2021 installed. I will take a look and explain what I find and do.

Re: I need help with UVW Unwrap

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 07:59:39 GMT

Sure, here 🙂

Re: I need help with UVW Unwrap

10DSpace — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 14:04:53 GMT

@Anonymous

Depending on how you plan to texture your coffee table you can take different approaches that range from a 1 click solution (Flatten Mapping with the default settings) to more labor intensive guided unwrapping using various techniques. If you are planning to texture the table in an external 3D Paint program like Substance Painter (or paint it in Zbrush) , then the 1 click solution is fine. On the other hand, if you plan to place the textures on specific areas of the table in Photoshop, then creating UV islands that are more “human readable” may be worth it.

Your original unwrapping start had UV islands that were not properly flattened and were overlapping (see first image below).

Since with unwrapping you are generally trying to create a 2D representation of the surface of your object with no overlapping UV islands, the quick and dirty way of doing this in Max is “Flatten Mapping" (Mapping>Flatten mapping). See the image below.

In the case of your coffee table, This actually creates islands that are human readable enough that even if you plan to texture it in Photoshop I would not go further.

But since you are using a Student Version of Max, I will assume that this is part of a learning exercise, and for some meshes, the quick and dirty flatten mapping unwrap can create some small and difficult to read UV islands. In this case, you can use a combination of select by angle followed by Quick planar map to control the unwrapping. (See next image).

Lastly, you may already know this, but I will mention that in cases where you are applying a material with no texture maps at all or only procedural maps (e.g., gradient ramp, noise) you do not need to unwrap at all, but instead simply apply a UVW Map modifier and select a mapping type (e.g., Planar, Cylindrical, Box,etc) appropriate to the shape of your mesh. Hope this helps.