UV Mapping Game Assets: Character

Files used: areadownloads.autodesk.com/wd...
This tutorial shows you how to cut seams and unwrap multiple UV meshes to texture a character.

[@wolfiekun]

slowly but surely Maya's getting to be a TON more user-friendly than it used to be. Thanks for showing the new tools!

[@parassharma2240]

i hope this notification reaches you , its been a year learning maya but u have wayy more experience than me , so how is maya for you now ? what do you feel about the interface and all

[@gamingguru3084]

One of the best video on the internet for character artists

[@Timathor]

I was looking everywhere for the correct one.. thanks

[@sreejakodam9154]

Thank you very much I am stuck with this issue from few weeks but this video helped me to do my work faster very helpful

[@ceeazy1833]

Thank you! This is highly appreciated :)

[@user-hd4ue3pu6g]

This is the best tutorial about uv

[@AntonioPalmucci]

if i move the map unfolded on the uv editor, everything is moving

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Yes, that's to be expected. You can move individual UVs without moving the map, but moving an entire shell will reposition the texture on the model.

[@user-dj4qv1ir7e]

quit the software

[@loanhodoodle64]

i like it! it is helpful for me! thanks you!

[@hamiltonafjr]

Very helpful!

[@darkreator8755]

Thank you very very much!!

[@yarosyari3516]

I used to make it somehow but I forgot. My uv shells of unified body have different shadow blinking along their borders in maya, how can I remove those borders for unified visual effect? It's something around smoothing groups but I can't remember the solution... //I look like need to have normal map for the first, it's all about tangent space right/left handled option. Now I have my color map only, so..

[@tendibachmayum9484]

Thank you for this Tutorial but did you create the jeans texture or can we get it online. I'm really confused on how can we get realistic human character skin texture. Please help.

[@mitholyrics]

I have a issue on straightening the leg uv. I align the uv using symmetrize tool and shift + double clicked the vertex but it selects all the uv of leg and also the body and boot.

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Try switching to "UV Shell" selection mode first, then select a shell, and go to Select > Convert Selection > to UVs.

[@oppsdoll3891]

how do i change the cut & sew color? i want to change it because when i try to cut something i can't tell if i had not cut the object and the seams of the object will be also white

[@Haruyuki_Art]

awesome thank youuuuu

[@FinalFinale]

7:08 How did you cast the top view of the hands??? Mine is just casting them as they are in the UV editor.

[@realart8]

In case someone watches this now and has the same issue - You need to Shift-click on Planar to open the option panel and change your projection axis to: "Project from: X axis"

[@oscarrkingsley]

Perfect

[@naughtyadventuresofmcbrouh5410]

I can't work with 3D cut and sew because it is EXTREMELY laggy. Anyone knows a fix? I've changed my viewport to direct x11 still don't do anything.

[@anikajeyaranjan5908]

Hi! Great tutorial! Creating the UV map went smoothly, however when I applied the png to the material it shows up on the UV editor and on the Lambert sphere but not on my actual character. How do I get it to show up on the character?

[@jessicahinkins7804]

Do you not get a weird resolution change when you scale the head differently to the other uvs?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Try going to Renderer > Viewport 2.0 settings and increase the Max Texture Resolution value (or turn off Resolution Clamping). Just know that this could impact performance.

[@TimothyBell90]

Anybody else have problems with the unfold tool? I've followed the tutorial exactly and nothing will unfold when I push the unfold button after selecting my UV shell.

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Check the unfold tool options. Is it set to Legacy mode by any chance?

[@TheIcemanModdeler]

They need to add Stacking along the up, down, left and right commands not just on the center, like in Ninja Dojo, also a Layout option that keeps overlapping uv's would be decent.

[@madisonfilan6190]

TheIcemanModdeler I would kill for layout options that obey stacked uvs. gahhh

[@TheIcemanModdeler]

Yeah me too, after playing more with the UV Toolkit In Update 3 I found out that it's possible to stack uv's on a direction, for that you need to select as a uv shell, selecting as uv's squishes all the selected uv's.

[@madisonfilan6190]

but can you organize and and size the uvs again after stacking them? that's what I'm really after

[@TheIcemanModdeler]

The UV's aren't locked, you can always reorganize them, was thinking since we don't have overlapping uv's for the Layout tool, we could only use Layout on the shells that aren't overlapped, and then use the Texel command to scale the overlapped uv's to the same size as the ones used by the layout and finally use the stacking feature to move them on top of the other ones.

[@madisonfilan6190]

that seems like a pretty good work around, but still you will be guessing on how many uvs you can cram in the uv space. Having the stacked uvs locked together before running a uniform layout would be the best. Another great feature would be pinning a group of uvs together then running layout features based on the pinned uvs as a whole. making the whole process of organizing a lot better. These are the tools I want and should have by now.

[@laurengoodwin7652]

Optimize tool not working. I get an error :( The error is //Error: line1: Unfold3DContext: Object’texUnfoldUVContext’ not found.

[@tayam92]

I did the tutorial a few times and it worked. Thank you for that! But when I applied the same method on my own character, it didn't go well. Everything else was fine until I applied the painted JPEG file to the mesh. It didn't turn out like the tutorial. It was a disaster! Please advise.

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Can you be more specific? What happened? Was the texture just not oriented correctly?

[@tayam92]

@@Autodesk_Maya It's kind of like...the (painted) snapshot of the UV map is used like a tile, all around the mesh. On some parts of the mesh it's bigger and on other parts, smaller. But somehow the pattern is symmetrical on both sides of the mesh. I don't really know how to explain it but I could send screenshots it if helps. Is there somewhere I could send the screenshots to on the Maya Help website or do you need my email add? FYI, I'm using/experimenting with triangles on my mesh.

[@Autodesk_Maya]

@@tayam92 You can try sharing your result here to get some feedback. forums.autodesk.com/t5/maya-shading-lighting-and/bd-p/area-b45 I suspect your UVs aren't aligned properly to your image file (possibly a scaling issue).

[@tayam92]

@@Autodesk_Maya Ok tq will try that first!

[@vac9781]

I Dont understand why after inserting texture in PSD . it all gets blurry and not HD in maya. how to make my texture look HD in maya?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

What's the resolution of the file? Is it a 4K square? If not, then its possible the resolution isn't good or the image is being scaled by Maya, resulting in bluriness.

[@OrkhanAshrafov]

is there an advantage in straightening the uvs? thanks

[@Autodesk_Maya]

It depends on the actual layout of the UVs over the geometry. Often just straightening out the perimeter is good enough.

[@seyfullahize]

9.20-so usefull thanks

[@skip36]

what if my uv on the pants isnt symetric

[@egey.]

Hello Sir, 4:38 When you open uv for arm why did you straight the borders to rectangle? When you unfold the first time it seems ok for painting. What is the spesific reason to make it rectangle?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

It's mainly to make organizing stuff in the UV Editor cleaner. However, you're right; you can totally leave them as they initially unfold as well.

[@egey.]

Thank you

[@egey.]

thank you for reply

[@muhammadshahab3889]

I have Maya 2017 but It does not have 3d cut and sew uv tool :( , how can I get this tool ?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

This tool comes with 2017 Update 3, so if you are a subscriber you can get it by upgrading your version.

[@knightayos5323]

Hello, I tried following the instruction but when it comes to unfolding I receive this message: // Error: line 0: Flags must come before objects: -ch. But I get a response from optimize(the UV gets squeezed). The model I made was from a previous version of Maya. Also, I could not find any help on autodesk website pertaining to this.

[@Autodesk_Maya]

I'd try deleting history on the model and trying again.

[@knightayos5323]

Maya Learning Channel I did that but nothing changed still the same problem. Anyway, I just downloaded maya 2018 and the uv unfold are working as of now i guess. Must be a bug with 2017 update 5. Also I have another question, after cutting the edges I'm selecting both sides of the edges or vertices? and after selecting cut/sew tool (or button with the word tool) I am unable to select uv anymore

[@srishtitiwari654]

unfold does not work..i have ticked and unticked the unfold3d.mll in the plug-in manager and it is not set to Legacy mode either. the error "// Error: Unfold3D process error." still appears. what can i do?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Are you on a Ryzen processor by any chance? There's a known bug with that at the moment. If so, you'll need to switch to Legacy mode for the time being.

[@Neburia]

Hello, guess i have some problems with my maya, when tryin to use unfold tool and optimize tool, the brush ones maya send me back this error: // Error: line 1: Cannot find procedure "Unfold3DContext".

[@Neburia]

also, im experiencing problems with unfolding shells, every time i try to unfold one single shell all the other shells unfolds again even if i change the unfold options for pins or else. thats so weird.

[@Autodesk_Maya]

I would try clearing your preferences folder and restarting Maya. That error definitely seems like a bug. Also are you unfolding via Pin Selected or Pin Unselected. That could explain your second issue.

[@Neburia]

there is no difference if pin selected or unselected, all the shells unfolds. ill try clearing my preferences.

[@jassem500]

I downloaded a head modeling and it's already UV mapped but not correctly so I'm redoing the UVs, however it has 3d cuts in the UVs and I couldn't remove them, I tried deleting the UVs but it didn't work, how can I delete everything in the UVs including the 3d cuts ?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

This is after you assigned the planar UVs as shown in 1:03? This should blow away all 3D cuts. If so, try going to UV > UV Set Editor, then delete any UV sets in that menu and create a new one, then repeat the steps in the video.

[@jassem500]

@@Autodesk_Maya thank you for responding❤ , I Figure it out 🙃 , the whole mesh was combined but the Vertices are no connected so it wasn't showing me the cuts, it was showing me the Borders😅 it was so confusing , once I connected them everything was fine 🙃

[@thynix_]

For a weird reason when i cut the head mesh in half, the two sides are different? What am i doing wrong? (Screenshot: gyazo.com/dbf9259556b67f4a655bdfb2d694ed07)

[@Autodesk_Maya]

This usually means that the two sides aren't identical. Maybe double check the geometry? Or erase half the head and mirror the other side to guarantee its the same.

[@thynix_]

Tried that, still doesn't work :/ Now i am trying to use different settings. No succes yet

[@uhohspaghet]

When I try to unfold it keeps giving me an error saying //Error: unfold3D process error

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Is this on the example model shown here, or your own model? What happens if you try it on just a regular sphere?

[@uhohspaghet]

@@Autodesk_Maya it’s my own model, I just tried on a sphere and it worked. I unticked the unfold in the plug-in and it made everything disappear in the us editor I’m going to try again

[@Autodesk_Maya]

@@uhohspaghet A couple of things to try: 1.) Did you apply the planar projection first as shown in the video to act as a starting point? It could be your starting UV layout is problematic 2.) If you go to UV > UV Set Editor, do you see multiple entries in there? If so, try removing all of them so that you're working on the default one.

[@uhohspaghet]

@@Autodesk_Maya yes I used an older file of my character model and redid the steps in the video and it worked! Thank you!

[@Gullzee]

How to get rid of uv seams on normal maps ???

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Unfortunately normal maps are just another type of 2D mapping, so you can't really "get rid of" UV seams. Instead, you need to think about where to put them strategically so they don't show up (or show up only at extreme angles).

[@Gullzee]

Maya Learning Channel Do AAA games use this technique as well ? How about naked characters how do they do it ?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Yes they do. Generally they'll hide the seams under the arms or crotch and ensure that the texture very closely line up along the seam.

[@TheBackRoom_Gaming]

Are you using substance painter? I found changing the normal maps mode to srgb instead of auto got rid of the seams.

[@loeylecana1972]

Maya learning channel, I can't find the '3D cut and sew UV Tool'. What should I do?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Hmm, which version of Maya are you using? 2017 Update 3 or later?

[@loeylecana1972]

@@Autodesk_Maya Probably the latest update there is. I just downloaded it a few weeks ago.

[@Autodesk_Maya]

@@loeylecana1972 In that case it should be in the Modeling menu set under the UV menu. If you don't see it there, I'd recommend deleting your prefs folder and restarting Maya.

[@loeylecana1972]

@@Autodesk_Maya That's where I've been checking. Also, I'm using a Mac and don't know how to reset it.

[@Autodesk_Maya]

@@loeylecana1972 knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2018/ENU/Maya-Customizing/files/GUID-393D1ECA-9B6E-4625-B5B1-3F28E62AFB1C-htm.html Try the steps under "Remove All Preferences".

[@top_animator5318]

Hi i have done other things perfectly . But i have issue with unfolding the Foot like you have done . Can you guide me ?.Anyone. Thanks

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Can you be more specific? What's happened with your foot vs what was shown?

[@top_animator5318]

@@Autodesk_Maya....Sir unwrapping of foot cannot be done in exact shape like you have done in your tutorial. I think there is misleading in marking edges with cut and sew tool . If you can contact via whats app i can explain better . Thanks if you do help or make unfolding short video for foot with upper portion .Good day

[@Autodesk_Maya]

@@top_animator5318 Unfortunately, I don't have whatsapp. I would try downloading the scene file included in the description and comparing the seams to those in your file.

[@top_animator5318]

@@Autodesk_Maya I want to send you my work with foot unfolding issue . I hope you understand it and solve the issue in no time . How i send you my work file .Have you any source to get it?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

@@top_animator5318 Your best bet is to post it on the AREA forum here: forums.autodesk.com/t5/maya-modeling/bd-p/area-b41 Then I and others in the community can help troubleshoot.

[@madisonfilan6190]

can you run layout options on stacked uv shells, while staying stacked??

[@madisonfilan6190]

this needs to happen.

[@amitpokhriyal9605]

you use which graphics card

[@Autodesk_Maya]

This was done on an NVIDIA Quadro K4000

[@amitpokhriyal9605]

How much time HD rendering in your PC

[@Autodesk_Maya]

That depends a lot on what's in the scene and what your render settings are (shadows, lights, anti-aliasing, etc). For this scene specifically? No more than a few seconds.

[@harshitology3498]

can you update the file link sir it isnt working

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Try it now? It should work.

[@nlzhf4111]

8:47

[@compositingwithkushal]

How to get that UV toolkit?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

They come as a new feature with 2017 Update 3!

[@compositingwithkushal]

Ok thanks

[@silverjdt]

Are these updates available to the Student edition?

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Yup

[@silverjdt]

Maya Learning Channel Has it released yet?

[@cosmicechoes42]

used files not downloadable

[@Autodesk_Maya]

Copy and paste the link into a new browser. KZbin is being weird these days about clickable links in descriptions.

[@daphneko6949]

maya is so damn hard to learn

[@IGarrettI]

No offence, but what year is this? This character could be acceptable in the 90s

[@KenmoreChalfant]

"acceptable"? It's for a tutorial... and for learning it's perfectly acceptable, and probably even preferable, to have a simple model.

[@-jrstudio6137]

LoL

[@-jrstudio6137]

What a woman