Well keep me in mind also for helping on these projects. I am at sort of a cross roads at the current time and looking for a change in direction. I find your projects very interesting.

I have the same problems working on my models now that you mention it. I really wish to load them with detail, but I have a problem with too dense meshes my self. I spent the day reserching how to reduce meshes yet keep the detail. I use Rhino (nurbs) as a modeler and it is realatively fast also, but you end up with a too much mesh over the entire model where it isn't needed in order to bring out fine detail. I have been exploring alterantives such as subdivision modeling, but its hard to muster the patience to learn a whole new software package and technique when all I want to do is keep working. What modeler or method is your modeler using?

UV mapping cab be very hard and in some ways its like reverse engionering. One of the advantages of Rhino is that I can get unwrapped maps out of rhino from which I can use as raw material to build my maps. Although when modeling with using your unwrapped map as a uvmap, one has to be careful to keep his isocurves uniform and parallel. My modeling style and choice of projects reflects this. I also tend to model my projects whole rather than a right and left hemosphere in order not to get unwrapped uvmap headaches.

When one does models such as yours using nurbs, your isocurves begin to go crazy and you have so many surfaces and joined together that it makes the unwrapped map useless. One has to fall back on making a series of cylinder maps and joining them with out distortion and in a logical mapping layout that both hides the seams and makes the texturer's work as easy as possible.

I have just noticed that UVMappro has some new features that makes cylinder uvmapping much easier and giving suprisingly great results that rivel or exceed my unwrapped maps with little effort. The only part that takes remarkable skill is joining these cylinder maps together seamlessly. I have reviewed the new uv map demo and I see that it has improved viewing and vertice manipulation to take a lot of the guess work out of the process. I am anxious to apply these tools to a model like yours.

marty