UV mapping advice for complex object

[Anonymous]

Hey! I'm mapping a monster with wings. For the wings, my approach was to create a basic wing shape and extrude each feather from its surfaces and shape it individually. 

I think I made a couple of bad moves on the way, including making the basic wing shape too complex (with too many edge loops and irregular organic shape), and using the "smooth" command before I finished extruding everything. This has made my life a lil difficult, but I am still able to work with it to get the model I want.

However the UV map for this is a mess. I have learned to make a cut and unfold more messy UV maps, but that has been for much simpler objects than this, I'm not sure how I would even start using this approach for my current model.

What do you guys think is the best approach? Is this still salvageable? 

I really don't want to start over, but if I did I was thinking of either

1. building the wing using my current approach with base wing shape and extrusions, but keep it way more blocky and controlled, and make it more complex later. I'd be hoping the UV map would end up more manageable this way.

2. I could build the wing base shape, and build each feather separately and arrange them after.

Thank you immensely in advance. 

[Roland.Reyer · Accepted solution]

Hi,

my personal opinion:

I would use separate feathers to build the wing.

That way I could duplicate a feather, deform it, place it, and so on.

Also, a basic feather could have UVs.

[erce.erim · Accepted solution]

Unless you are the master himself in drawing awesome textures, the approach mentioned by Roland would be the way you want to go.

Think of the bones (and you don´t need to make it as real as it might be - plus depending if it´s going to be animated or not) - separate the pieces for convinience in modeling, modifying and texturing.

You can modify the feathers, but you could still keep one UV and one texture - thats advanced, but its possible.

Hope that helps a bit.