Does anyone know who creates the UVmaps for the freebies they post on Content Paradise? I desperately need to ask this person to show me how to do this. I MUST find out how this is done. And I will pay this person to show me how to do it. I've tried Body Paint, UVmapper, DeepUV, Modo and a few other automatic unwrapping programs. And I never get even close to this kind of flattened out, one piece UV pelt map for animals. Since I've tried almost all of the UV programs available and none of them create this type of pelt mapping as an option. This person must have a certain method to make these super flat pelts for four legged animals. I cannot learn this on my own simply by using the software. I desperately need this person to show me how this is being done. I can't move on until I learn how to do this. I have to learn how to do this! -ScottA

I wish I knew the answer here also. It seems to me that you could separate the legs from the body. UV map them separately, then stitch them back on. All in UV Mapper Pro. I have not tried this however.

Believe me I have tried that thousands of times to no avail.
Everyone says to do that but it's simply not doable by mere mortals and the most popular software packages.

It appears from the map that the UV's are somehow peeled away at certain points. Like someone took a knife and split the length down the belly. Then took a knife and split the underside of each leg. Then somehow peeled those ends outwards to form a pelt.
It's a total mystery to me how this is being done since I've never seen anything even remotely available in the current software tools we have that can do this.

I looked for a contact e-mail address on the CP site. But I can't find one. I wish I knew how to contact this person.

-ScottA

Message edited on: 11/16/2005 14:43

So which UV Mapping software has come the closest to being able to do this for you?

Attached Link: Sixus1 Forum

Scott why don't you ask at Sixus1, I know they make the CP freebie models. Nice people, I am sure they will help if they can.

I've seen this done in Blender. I don't know how to do it exactly, but I've watched a video tutorial. It involves marking edges as "seams" and then using the "LSCM Unwrap" feature built into blender. By marking seams, you are telling it exactly what you described above, i.e. where to "cut" the mesh before attempting to unwrap it. Then the "LSCM Unwrap" attempts to heuristically unwrap the mesh in such a way as to maximize the coverage on the texture map, while minimizing the distortion of angles in the unwrapped mesh. If you haven't heard of it, blender is a powerful and fast open-source 3d modeling program. It takes a while to learn it. It has about a bazillion tricky functions - and folks who know blender really well invoke them all with hot keys. If there is some easier tool, by all means, don't start learning blender just for this. But if all else fails, give it a try. At least it's free!

I think Les does it. He has modeled and rigged them.

~bookmark~ I'd like to know how it's done too.

Message edited on: 11/16/2005 16:21

"So which UV Mapping software has come the closest to being able to do this for you?" I've tried lots of them. And it's funny but they all act very similar in basic general practice even though they vary a lot in price. Some have stitching. Some don't. Some can rotate a model and or show a prewiew as you edit the UV's. And some don't. The toolsets vary a little bit. But basically the concept and output from all of them are pretty much similar. UVmapper is the best value for the toolset around. But as far as I can tell. Even the newest version can't create an animal pelt like the one I posted on it's own. The newest Modo can theoretically do it but it's based on selecting edge loops to do it. When you try to do that with an .obj polygon mesh file. There are far too many edges to select. It would take a year to select the edges on a single model. So unless you make the model with edge loops inside Modo to start with. It's insanely difficult trying to utilize that new UV function. Unless there is some trick I don't know about. Who is Les?

Les is Sixus1 www.poserforums.com

Les is the nice guy from Sixus1 :) Edit: crosspost, whoops =^.^=

Message edited on: 11/16/2005 16:49

Les is the head-honcho over at Sixus1 Media. And I happen to know he likes this kind of mapping (have a look at the uv's of the Ringmaster). As to how it is done - well - there are many different methods for doing this. I know that Maya is the primary modelling (& hence I believe UV'ing) package used by Les/Sixus1 but one can (with a little patience) get similar results in Blender by using the LSCM unwrapping functionality. It is by no means as easy as using the Maya UV tools BUT it is free. If you're interested in following that route - I can outline the steps necessary (but a full example such as pelting a human figure would take more free time than I have available). --EK

An explanation using Maya would be just fine.
But no humans please. Human's are upright not horizontal and it just confuses things trying to pelt a human and apply the theory to a four legged animal.
I'm an animal modeler in a human modeling world. ;-)
The main thing for me is to understand the actual specific actions needed to do it. Not just broad generalizations.
An assume I walked in off the street. And guide me step by step through it type of thing is what I really need.

For example:
Someone will say to me something like. Lay out the model on the X axis(side view) then cut off the top section. Then map the legs and body with a cylinder function. Then stitch the parts together.

Well for starters. These types of actions produce overlapped parts and don't tell you how to flatten them.
Secondly. Once you have all of the parts. You have seams where they once connected to the model. There are literally thousands of points that you'd have to stitch back together.
And most times it is physically impossible to figure out where to stitch them back together. Even if you tried to.
Look at the image I posted. Just imagine chopping those UV's into parts then rotating and remapping them around. Then trying to re-connect them. That's insane.
This is the typical type of tutorial I see, but that won't work.
What I need to know is HOW to flatten. HOW to spread. HOW to select. HOW to know where to stitch parts together.
Those kind of very important specifics.

Message edited on: 11/16/2005 17:26

Attached Link: http://www.quinlor.de/tutorials/fig_uv1

I can't remember who posted this link or what forum it was but this is the best I found recently. Ok it's a different kind of character but it was realy interesting in terms of methods. It's UV Unwraping a figure in Wings3D.

I would be very interested on this too... I believe UV mapper pro shows which points are the same in a "broken" uvs by pointing the one point red and the other green...Doesn't that help stitch step?

that looks like a Maya uv map to me,it has a habit of stretching the hell out of your map & not doing any 'intelligent' relaxing..:& making it all as square as possible
check out Unfold3d or the 3dsmax8 pelt mapper(30 day fully working demo available)..much more effiicient & the least amount of stretch I've ever seen

http://download.autodesk.com/media/3dsmax/peltmap_max8_380k.mov

Cheers
Stefan

Message edited on: 11/16/2005 18:40

I wonder if they do it by projecting the quadruped's vertices/polygons onto the minimum set of bounding cylinders, then unwrapping those? Either that, or maybe they can use some "cylinderize" command that morphs the parts into a set of 5 cylinders, similar to the way the "spherize" command will morph any part into a sphere.

The process involves breaking the model up into several parts that can be flattened, and then stitching them back together again. It's not something that can easily be explained in a few steps, and each model always presents different challenges. I've been thinking of starting a tutorial (it will take some time), but I'm not sure whether it would be best to do an animal or a human figure. I go between UV Mapper Pro and Deep UV to do my UV mapping (I think this is how the Millenium figures are done).

I honestly don't understand how that is done Deecey. The amount of points that need to be moved around to flatten then stitched back together is astronomical. You must be using some technique to force the edges of each piece you pull aprt into a straight line to be selected with a lasso tool. Not one at a time. Right?

"The amount of points that need to be moved around to flatten then stitched back together is astronomical." as most organic models are subdivided after modelling you should do all uv mapping before any subdividing,that way your not dealing with tens of thousands of points

OK ... think of it this way ... (and I realize this will be hard to visualize without pictures.) Let's say that you want to UV map a human character. I start with UV Mapper Pro. First, separate the head and neck, hands, and feet from the body. The head is usually mapped cylindrically and kept separate from the body. The hands and feet are usually planar mapped. What is basically left is the torso, arms and legs (and really, when you think about it, what you have left is basically a catsuit, or even a shirt and pants that are joined together). Cut off the arms from the torso, and map them both as cylinders (that flattens them). Cut off the legs and map them as cylinders. Now you have a torso left. Select the front section and planar map it. Select the back and planar map it, but then divide it in half and one half on each side of the front, where they would naturally join. At this point I usually take the individual parts into Deep UV to relax them, because it helps to clean up uneven seams and such. I don't do any dividing and stitching in Deep UV (I do all of that in UV Mapper Pro) because Deep UV has a tendency to change the vertex order when you start dividing the mesh. At this point you are probably ready to start stitching things back together again, keeping track of where the vertices will join together and adjusting your flattened sections as necessary until they all join correctly. I know it's really hard to visualize things, but if you think of each part of your model as one of the basic mapping shapes (sphere, box, plane, or cylinder) it starts to get a little easier. (This is one of those topics where pictures are DEFINITELY worth 1000 words).

Unfold 3D? http://www.polygonal-design.fr/e_unfold bB

I understand what you're saying, but Doesn't UV Mapper Pro have relaxing? I saw that on the website but I haven't tried it. bB

I will venture the fact that Unfold3D is not worth the money (yes, I tried the demo). Other software out there does the same thing with extras such as modelling. For example - Modo has this feature, Blender has similar (via LSCM), etc. --EK

Regarding the relaxing feature of UV Mapper Pro ...

It does have relaxing, but it keeps the outer edges of the flattened model in their original position, and the inner vertices are relaxed to achieve the best mapping in that shape.

Deep UV can also do that, but it also can relax all vertices to get the least amount of distortion.

Message edited on: 11/16/2005 21:17

I have been using Unwrapper3D a lot lately, and have made a crude tutorial on pelting and relaxing UVs. I will re-write it over Thanksgiving break, and post it on my site, with a freebie to go with it. I'll keep everybody posted. -Starkdog

Attached Link: http://www.righthemisphere.com/support/tutorials/index.htm#DUV

i do the same as Deecey... i go between uvmapper and deep uv. mostly uvmapper to start and the rest in deep uv. a tutorial that i found that helped me get on the right path was at righthemisphere by Colm Jackson from RuntimeDNA. it got me thinking about ways to do it.. the 1st time i did it took me quite a while to figure what goes where. the way i do it... i think about it being cut open from the bottom (for animals... and from the back for humans). when i start in uvmapper i seperate the legs from the body and the feet/paws from the legs. then i have whats left mapped from the top, looking down at it (again if its an animal... i guess it would be from the front if it was human). i bring it into deep uv and follow the steps in colm's tutorial for the body... it taught me alot about how to stitch parts together and relax them. after i have the body done i move on to the legs... i here's where it took me some time to figure out the best way to split up the legs and get them to map right. i had to sketch it out on a piece of paper to finally get what i had to do lol... i'll trrrryyy to explain what i had to do for the legs... i started with a view of them from the front... so i can split them in half.. the "top" side (or the side of the leg/arm that faces out from the body) of the uv map is connected to the body and then relaxed as in the tutorial.. then whats left, the "bottom" is divided again.. because one half of the leg flips up with "1" and the other half flips down with "3".... and so on. after i'm done with the legs its about the same step with the feet/paws/hands.... Colm's tut was what i kept going back to till i got the hang of it. thats about it.... i hope this didn't get too confusing :| its hard without exact pictures of each step. if you have any questions feel free to ask..and i'll be glad to help as best as i can... i should be around more often now.

I've tried Colm's method and it won't work for me. DeepUV selects too many points when I lift the model's body. And even if I hand select the points to join. The model explodes if I use the Relax command. I could get away with simply mapping the body on the X axis and relax the outter edges. But DeepUV explodes the model that way too. The Relax function in Bodypaint and UVmapper don't spread the outer edges of the model outwards like I want. Instead, they squish and compress the model into a mess. I don't understand how people are able to select the outer edges of models UV's and simply scale them outwards to relax them.

The model explodes during the relax command because Deep UV doesn't like Poser's very small scale.

Import your OBJ into Poser, scale it up by 100 times (in other words, 10000%), and bring the scaled up version into Deep UV. That should help. After you're done with your UV (and you'll probably need to go between Deep UV and UV Mapper Pro), bring the scaled up UV Mapped object back into Poser, keeping it at 100 times the original size during the import process. Then, adjust the Scale setting in the Parameters window to 1% to bring it back to its original size. Export the finished OBJ file again as your final version.

Message edited on: 11/17/2005 12:03

I don't understand how people are able to select the outer edges of models UV's and simply scale them outwards to relax them. Are you using UV Mapper Classic (the free version), or UV Mapper Pro?

.

I use an older version of UVmapper. But I do have the newest demo version and that's the one I'm testing the relax feature on as far as UVmapper goes.

I scaled the model up 10,000% and tried the DeepUV tutorial again.
This time the model didn't explode. But when I try to use the Relax function. The model gets twisted into a mess.
The picture shows the before and after relaxing operation.

Message edited on: 11/17/2005 14:24

From the looks of things the way they are, it appears as though what you might want to do is take that "before relax" version, and then do a Lift in Deep UV. The reason it might be crimping like that is because you're trying to relax the top part and the bottom part together. You may need to split them apart, and then stitch them back together again after you relax each section. We'll get you there. Keep posting. 8-)

hello again sorry about forgetting to mention about sizing the poser model up 1st before bringing it into deep uv try selecting the part in red and then relaxing (each side will have to be done seperately) and see if that has better results.

Ok. Selecting each side in those areas worked fairly well. Now how do I flatten out the large concentrated points running down the middle of the model? I tried selecting them like in the image and using the relax function but they didn't spread out much. I tried selecting more mesh points around them and they spread out a little more. But still not enough. And they were starting to twist and warp from too much relaxing.

looking at your picture again i'm a little concerned that you might have joined parts that shouldn't be joined... it might explain why your model bunched up when you tried to relax it. the attached image shows what part i highlighted and joined... after its joined there was no crossing lines in the leg area. if you join the wrong points... when you relax it it will try and pull the parts over to the sides it thinks it should be on, i guess would be a way of explaining it... and now would be the time to mention that cutting the jaw from the head would make things easier too later in the mapping... but thats just from my personal experience. you can just lasso the jaw on the right side of the screen on the model itself instead of going all the way back to the uvmapper stage.

It's not going to work. There's just too many problems trying to use DeepUV. I can't even lift apart the two halfs in DeepUV because one or two points stay connected. There's just too many odd glitches getting in my way. Although Cinema4D makes nice clean quad based meshes. I still create a fair amount of points and polygons because I don't use splines. I model by slicing up a cube using a small amount of hypernurbs for smoothing and create polygons that ultimately creates too many points to try to manipulate afterwards. If I want to be able to create a nice UV map without pulling my hair out. I guess I'm going to have to make the model using Nurbs edges. Trying to edit even a simple .obj polygon model is just way to complicated. I'm never going to pull it off this way.

sorry to hear that its been such a hassle for you :( one last word from me in case you or anyone else reading this tread is interested.. those one or two points that seem to stay connected were a HUGE pain to me until i stumbled across one of the tools in the tool menu.. the top right hand "Polygon Wand Selection Tool". it basically to pick the points individually. so when it looks like something is connected its just overlaping points... huge pain. you take the tool and click on the stuck points and it will highlight it.. if you look at the lines comming from the points you should see red and pink.. the red means its connected to that part and when you move the point it should go in the direction that the red line(s) go in.. in the 2nd picture the point goes to the right... and the last picture the point goes to the left. keep doing that and eventually the points will all be seperated. good luck if you decide to try this again :)

Thanks MoonRose. I gave up on trying to map the body. It's too complicated and has too many points to deal with. It's not too bad as a planar for now. So I moved on to the less complicated legs parts. I started In UVmapper out in Planar Z. Then used the polygon selection tool to cut the leg in half. Then I flattened both parts and stitched one side together to get a nice flat leg. But I still have one seam on the outter edges. How Do I get rid of that Seam? How do I stitch the outside edges together? Am I even supposed to stitch them together? Or am I supposed to line them up somehow to not see the seam?

hm there shouldn't be a seam on the outside.. did you split the inside of the leg in 2 and move the parts to the proper sides? i started like you and used planar z then cut the leg in half. then i mapped it planar x for both outter part and inner part of the leg like in the top picture. then i lassoed half of the inner part, cut it and moved it to the bottom of the outter leg, joined and relaxed. same for the remaining half of the inner leg. you'll notice that there are some pink points wanting to be connected on the bottom (pic 3). ignore that and move the 2nd half of the leg to the top, join and relax it. now the seam should be on the inside of the leg instead of the outside. and after you do this and notice you want to clean up some of the seams, you can take little stray areas/points, cut them and move them to the other side of the seam and join them to that side. you can't select just the points and cut those... it has to be 3 or 4 points minimum before it can actually cut anything.. so basically anything that makes a triangle or square.

Thanks MR.
I found what I was doing wrong. I cut the leg in half then relaxed it and stitched one side together.This is wrong.

The key thing I have to remember is the three piece rule:
The bodypart must be in three pieces before stitching together. As well as all of the seams facing eachother in the same direction before joining them.

I have a much clearer understanding of the theory now.
But DeepUV still has some things I can't figure out.
I can't spread large numbers of clustered points enough with the relax functions. I wish it would spread points instead of constricting them during the relax.

I'm also getting weird things like a seem that the program wants to join to more than one parent.
Example: The right thigh has been split from the hip. Yet when I relax the rThigh and get it flat to my liking. For some reason when I select it for joining. I get a few stray points that show up on the opposite side of the hip that the program says it wants to join to.
Hard to describe. But it's getting confused as to where the original seam was when I try to join them back together.

I can't relax an entire body part. If I do that. It collapses in on itself. So I have to select the inside of the part to relax it. Leaving a lot of close unrelaxed points around the circumference of the part.
If I could relax those points outwards, instead of inwards, I could get much better results around the edges of the parts.

Message edited on: 11/18/2005 17:29

its strange that you cant relax an entire body part... after you're done stitching it together you should be able to just select it and relax it. if it collapses in on itself the only thing that i can think of is that there are some points that are connected on opposite sides that shouldn't be, and when you relax its trying to pull itself back to the sides it thinks it should be on. about the stray points.. i can't quite picture what could be going on there so i can't offer any help on that. if you're really stuck you could send me the obj of what you have so far and i can take a look at it.