How to project UV's without changing overwriting my seams?

[Anonymous]

New to Maya, picking up fast but having trouble with UV's. My reference point is Blender, where seams can be defined by the user and automatic UV projection respects them. It seems that in Maya, if you define your own seams and then try to automatically unwrap the mesh, Maya cuts new seams. I don't want that, and it doesn't make sense to have to move each vertex for such a simple mesh.

I did a manual projection (UV -> Automatic) and then manually defined my seams. You can see in the first image that this messes up the original projection but that is ok for now. Now I want to do another automatic projection but it has to respect the seams that I set so I get the islands I want!

You can see in the second image that if I do UV -> Automatic again, it gives me the same projection I started with. 

The third image has a background containing the panel I am modeling: It's two wooden boards inset in a wooden frame--very simple geometry. I made this screenshot myself when I made this same scene in Blender.

How can I unwrap this mesh using my seams without having to manually adjust points? I want to lay as many islands out lengthwise as possible, like planks of wood.  Maya binary file would be attached but it won't let me for some reason, maybe someone can tell me why that is too...

[damaggio]

hi there,

Maya does not create new seams after unwrapping, if the seams are not sewed then yes the unfold will relaxed them apart.

You could also project one side with all the wood planks and unfold the shell without the need to cut any seams, some minor stretching will happen but maybe it won't be visible enough.

[damaggio · Accepted solution]

In Maya, the projection has to happen first to create new UVs, then select the mesh edges and cut out further edges if necessary and unfold.

For wood planks the Uvs have to be manually rotated to replicate a real wood box assembly.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Damaggio, it was tricky figuring out what was going on but I was able to unwrap it almost pixel-perfect by unfolding by shell (island). I will use your advice to be more efficient in the future.