Are you trying to unwarp the Highres Model (the one with the turbosmooth applied) or the lowres model? I would suggest working on the lowres model for unwraps. It makes mapping easier! Once we know that we can look into whats causing your problem.

May I also just point out that you have some bad topology (mesh) making 5 sided polygons. These can be dangerous and should be quaded or carefully converted to tris.

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a 3d artist's journal
[Link to blog.cunnington.co.za]

I'm working with the one which has turbo smooth, which is wrong if i understand your correctly.
I've put the the model without turbosmooth next to it to make things more clear, should have told that in the beginning..

I've followed this tutorial to make the model.
URL:
[Link to www.homemadeanime.com]

I don't really understand what you mean with your last sentence, could you explain that a little more maybe?

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Yeah I got that you put the pic together to show the differences.

Yeah isn't necessarily wrong, its just going to be easier to UVMap the low res model! I have known mesh smoothing to damage UV's. (But these dayz its rare) Its a weird bug you have got there coz I cannot seem to recreate it. Could you post a full screen shot of Max, and your modifier stack so we can try debug this properly for you!

In terms of the second thing. A polygon at best should only have 3 or 4 sides only. Some of your geometry has 5 sides. See pic for details! You should think of cutting in more geometry to convert these to 4sided or convert them to tri's.

~C

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a 3d artist's journal
[Link to blog.cunnington.co.za]

I hope this screenshot is clear enough:
[Link to athena-hi.fontys.nl]

I'm going to try to fix that 5-sided problem now.

Thanks for the help till now

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Unwrapping can be quite a tricky thing to get your head around when you are starting out especially when you open up the editor and find a huge mess of uvs staring back at you. maybe for starters apply a uvw map modifier set to planar and then add your unwrap modifier. then you will see something a bit more comprehensible when you first open the edit window. you could paint straight onto this planar mapped starting point but the texture will stretch down the sides and it probably won't cut it for the whole mesh. The easiest way to start working in the edit window is to begin making selections and using the quick planar button to planar map groups of faces that are close to each other. you can get away with quite a alot. for example you could select the faces of the hand hit quick planar map and get a top down view to paint on. bare in mind though doing it this way will work to a point but if you want a complete map with alot of detail you will need to unrwrap it more thoroughly.

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Okay, your modifier stack looks fine. It doesn't explain why the UV Seams are appearing at the edge of every polygon!

A quick and dirty method to fixing the seams (this is in Max 9) would be to grab the section of the mesh you are working (in the UV window) and hit cntrl+w, that will weld vertx within a specified distance.... that distance is specified in the options window.

Otherwise, good old Tyson has given you the best place to start mapping from scratch. Simple Planar projections always work well, I use them as a base to all my UV Unwrapping!!!

~C

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a 3d artist's journal
[Link to blog.cunnington.co.za]

.........Learn one thing at a time.
You're trying to unwrap a human-ish model, that you made.
First learn to model then learn to paint.

You need a tutorial that shows you how to unwrap a person. Hands, heads, legs, and other parts are unwrapped to be easy to photoshop and or paint. Look at some examples. [Link to images.google.com]
My method:
1. Select area of mesh, (like the arm).
2. Use cylinder or plane unwrap.
3. Relax SMALL parts of the selection at a time.(by that i mean not the whole selection)
4. Adjust vertexes, individually.
5. Move selection COMPLETELY out of the way for next selection. (Out side the blue box)
6. Once EVERY part of the model is unwrapped try to start welding parts that go together that will be painted. (Try not to disturb the shape of your unwrapped meshes)
7. Start moving your unwrapped shapes BACK INSIDE of the blue box area. (rotate, scale, cuss, have fun...)
8. Now you must feel something called, Pleasure.

To me modeling in editable poly is like Kung fu. There are a few hundred different styles. It all depends on what you’re doing. For instance, you can’t learn how to model a hot chick after memorizing a tutorial on producing a photo realistic bulldozer…. Even if they’re both covered in mud and are huge hoes… Watch people model on youtube.

Half the reason people use max is to render to texture. This lets you take a collection of high res models and bake their normal (bump) maps into your low poly.... only then a jedi you will be.

I know “white crane” editable polly jitsu…

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Hello everyone,

I'm new to 3DS Max, doing my first proper model (other than just mucking around) and I'm having similar problems so I thought I'd chime in here rather than make a new thread, hope you don't mind rphl.

I've modelled a somewhat low poly character and I am just completely stuck on the unwrapping uv map part.

I'm following a tutorial that tells me which unwrapping methods (Cylinder, Plane, Box, etc) to use on each parts and that isn't a problem. But I just can't seem to work out how I break the mapping up into different parts and then bring it back together on one UV Map, if that makes sense.

To isaacg: That method is what I "want" to do, it's also what the tutorial says but I can't seem to get it right for some reason, probably something amazingly stupid and obvious I am doing wrong I just don't know what it is.

Ok my dilemma is basically this:

1. I have my modelled character as an editable poly.
2. I select just the poly's of the head area in edit poly mode.
3. I put a UVW Mapping modifier on.
4. I use a cylindrical mapping Gizmo to get the texture surface more even.
5. I put a Unwrap UVW modifier on, I unwrap the selected head area, and that is fine.

But what do I do now? Do I collapse the modifiers and start again on a different section? (Which I tried but didn't seem to work for me)

Or can I use the one UVW Mapping modifier on multiple sections somehow? Whenever I try to do this it messes up the previous area.

How do I use seperate UVW Mapping modifiers on different sections, ie: Cylinder for head, plane for chest, cylinder for arms, etc, unwrap them seperately and then get them all together on the one UVW Map at the end?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I've tried to find some tutorials that specifically cover the subject (Other than the ebook one I bought) that explains it better, but not having any luck.

Here's a picture of the model I am trying to unwrap if that helps:

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Think of the unwrap uvw modifier as a way of actually editing the Uvs no matter what they happen to be. If you assigned various uvw map modifiers to subobject selections and collapsed each of them down you would get them all overlapping in the uvw edit window of the unwrap. each one would be using the whole uv space. You can do it this way for many texturing tasks but if you want to paint on each part in photoshop you need to lay them all out in the same 0-1 uv space. In the editor there are loads of tools and ways to achieve this. pelt mapping is probably the easiest but. you can make selections within the modifier by going to the sub-object level of the unwrap, select faces then use one of the mapping buttons, planar, cylindrical etc... doing that is just the same as applying seperate uvw map modifiers but you can move the results out of the way and map another part. you can then select all the unwrapped pieces and use pack uvs to fit them all into the space. Normally you will also want to weld all the pieces that you can back together along an edge to limit the amount of seams in your texture. Hope that makes some sense. I'm kindof rushing off to bed so let me know if it doesnt .

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Wow Thankyou Tyson!!! I found a "Pelt Mapping" video on youtube that is exactly what I needed!

[Link to www.youtube.com]

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