Hi everyone,

I'm a Poser guy, have been since I first discovered 3D modeling back about 13 yrs ago. I still use Poser and I'm familiar with it but I've got an issue I'd like some advice on please.

I used to use UV Mapper pro and I was quite familiar and happy with it. But over a year ago a technical issue with my PC caused me to have to replace my hard drive. In doing so, I had to reload UV Mapper pro and a host of other programs. When I did, my PC recognized this as an unregistered copy of the program and I was unable to export or save any texture maps. I no longer had the registration code from my original purchase and the folks at the website haven't updated anything since 2016 and no longer answer any support questions. So that was the end of UV Mapper pro. I even went so far as to try through various methods to extract the code from my old damaged hard rive, with no success.

So I did some research and eventually purchased Ultimate Unwrap 3D, which I hoped would be the answer, but truthfully it's not as easy to use as the website claims and I struggle with it. Seems to me there are far too many bells and whistles with this program and it's not easy to use or very intuitive at all. It's a hard program to use and figure out, and struggling with it saps the enthusiasm for my work.

I'm just looking for some thoughts and or advice. I'm certainly no professional - just a part time hobbyist who wants modeling to be fun, not a chore. I know I'm behind the times with much of the technical side of 3D modeling, so forgive me if anything I'm asking seems dated or naive. But I have my comfort zone in which I work and I'm familiar there. Plus, working full time, while trying to raise a young baby, and having recently moved across country prevent me from spending a lot of time reading and catching up on the latest and greatest improvements, additions, and techniques in the 3D world.

Would anyone who reads this mind telling me how you create texture maps for your models? What programs do you use? What works and what doesn't? Trying not to be discouraged. Any thoughts, or advice is welcome indeed and much appreciated.

Steve R.

I like Ultimate unwrap.

My work flow is

Hex to Ultimate Unwrap...

3D tools  > Weld Model

Select By Material to get rid of the Hex Def Surface

Select ALL

2 D tools > Relax UVs

2D Tools > LSCM UVs

Arrange the islands on the map

File > Export UV map > save as PNG

File Save as > New file name so the original is preserved

Good Luck!!

Andy

I used to use Wings and Roadkill. Now I do everything in Blender. Blender's UV mapping tools were similar to Roadkill's and were more forgiving. For a while I still modeled in Wings and then UV mapped in Blender but I got tired of switching back and forth so I dropped Wings

I was just going to post about Blender as well @RedPhantom so you beat me to it.

I've used a few different modeling apps over the years, but always came back to Blender, and even though I do still have Silo, though don't use it as often as I used to, I still bring anything I create in Silo into Blender for UV mapping.

Seems like the ticket is learning to use Blender. But geez...... there's a million buttons, toggles, interfaces. I get so overwhelmed just looking at the home screen I have no idea where to begin! My modeling program of choice is Wings. Has been for years. I keep saying I need to learn Blender but I don't even know how to start

Whichever mapper you use, it's not so bad if the materials are left in 'default' positions. It's when everything gets 'optimised', shuffled around, shoe-horned into corners...

Yes, I get reduced to incoherent despair when trying to mask glass, glows etc etc from a mega-map that looks like a 'Mondrian'...

And I still get flashbacks to the patient hours spent hunting a 'My Little Pony' eyes...

My usual tactic, before reverting to a sorta-binary-chop to localise said parts, is to try each style of mapping by turn, see if anything looks familiar...

Also, agree with Blender's UI issues. That, like DS and GIMP, gives me a prompt migraine...

Blender's UI has improved greatly over the years. There is a lot to it, but that's because you can do so much in it. The good news is you don't have to learn it all if you're just looking for a UV editor. If you're looking for tutorials, I like blender guru because he doesn't speed through his tutorials and explains why you do something rather than just saying do it. But there are a ton of good tutorials out there. And there is a blender forum here that has some knowledgeable people here who are happy to help if you have questions.

I pretty much agree with @RedPhantom on this.  I've been using Blender since version 2.45, and have now gone through a second major UI update, and over the past few months I've been getting acquainted with version 2.93.6, the latest version of 2.9, and I'm liking it.  I haven't gotten into version 3.x as yet, mostly because "I" feel it's still in a WIP status, but I'm sure I'll change that feeling eventually.

That said, I agree with checking out Blender Guru's tutorials, as I've always found them informative, and easy to follow.  Another I would suggest is Grant Abbitt, who's tutorials I find not at all difficult to follow.

Also, and this may not be something you're interested in, but 6 1/2 years ago I discovered a site called Udemy, where they specialize in classes in almost any subject you can think of, and Blender courses are prominent in their list.  In fact Grant Abbitt teaches several.  He and several other instructors teach their classes at a site called GameDev.tv, though they are NOT all gaming classes.  When I've bought a class at Udemy that's taught through GameDev, I get an invitation to GameDev, where they have a very active community and forum where you can ask any question, or show off your progress on a project, and get very helpful comments.  Oh and if you buy one of these courses at Udemy, you get "life-time" access to the course, so there's no limited time to which you have to take any courses.  ALSO, they have sales on their courses, so if the price isn't quite right, keep checking, as I've bought most of my classes there at their lowest price of $9.99 for life-time access.

Hopefully some of this information will help you in your future endeavors with Blender.

I have Ultimate Unwrap 3D Pro, I truly recommend, it certainly may seem a little daunting for beginners, but it still helped me a lot to learn when creating my first products. I still use it today for quick inspection and small projects. You can even preview animations on it, seeing the bone rigging and stuff. They have a very good tech support via email too.

I managed to learn the basics by reading the website tutorials and the help docs (help/contents). Just be patient, it may take some time to scroll/read over some pages, but it is worth it, you will start to understand it better.

I'm probably the odd man out here...but I do all my modelling in Hexagon.
UV mapping in  UV Layout
I usually fix/change mat zones in UV Mapper pro
Grouping in AutoGroup Editor
stitchwitch, paintshop pro, for textures
morphs/sculpting in Poser with morph brush

DivabugDesigns I sure wish that Steve Cox over at the UV Mapper website would still support UV Mapper Pro. I used that program for years and was used to it, liked it and found it not too difficult to use. He seems to have fallen off the map, not having updated the website for the last several years and no longer responding to any requests of any kind.

About two years ago, I suffered a hard drive crash. I was a user of UV Mapper Pro at the time and when I had to replace my hard drive, I lost some info, including the registration key for my copy of the program. So after I reloaded it onto my new hard drive I found myself using a trial version which wouldn't allow me to save or export any maps I created. After numerous unanswered e-mails to Mr Cox, I tried several hacks people suggested to try recovering the registration key from my damaged hard drive, all without success. So I was forced to switch gears and find a new mapping program. After reading reviews, I settled on Ultimate Unwrap and struggled with it from day one. I find it to be cumbersome, not very intuitive and not at all easy to use.

So here I am....a part time 3D hobbyist who is stuck in the past, happy to use older software when available (happy with poser 11, Wings 3D, Paint Shop Pro version 6, and until all this, UV Mapper Pro). I don't have time to learn new software and apps. I work full time, I recently moved across the country and my wife and I have a 9 month old baby, plus we just found out we have another on the way. So time for this old dog to learn new tricks, is in very short supply.

I'd give almost anything to have UV Mapper functioning for me again.

Steve

Primarily

Blender and Wings for Modeling

Mudbox and Blender for sculpting

Mudbox for texture painting and map baking

Blender and Mudbox retopo

Arrowhead 42... I know you do a lot of your modeling in Wings. I'm puzzled why you don't use it for UV mapping. It has a perfectly capable UV editor built in. You can unwrap, cut and stitch, pin verts by selecting vertices (which causes them to be pinned and excluded from the unwrap passes), normalize island scales, stretch optimize, and a bunch of other things. It's not a super premium unwrapping and packing solution but I don't think you are uv mapping terribly complex organic shapes. I mean if you're already comfortable in Wings...

Here's a link to long ago tutorial (stored on the Wayback machine archive) wherein the author demonstrates uv mapping a human figure with Wings3D alone. Even if you're not doing figure stuff the author explains the use of wings mapping tools at length. Just in case you were ever confused by some of the options. For me this was basically the missing manual for Wings UVing...

https://web.archive.org/web/20210411105734/http://quinlor.de/tutorials/fig_uv1.html

Here's a link to long ago tutorial (stored on the Wayback machine archive) wherein the author demonstrates uv mapping a human figure with Wings3D alone. Even if you're not doing figure stuff the author explains the use of wings mapping tools at length. Just in case you were ever confused by some of the options. For me this was basically the missing manual for Wings UVing...

https://web.archive.org/web/20210411105734/http://quinlor.de/tutorials/fig_uv1.html

It still is very useful!

Liquid_Ice posted at 7:43 PM Sat, 6 August 2022 - #4442413

primorge posted at 4:05 PM Sat, 6 August 2022 - #4442400

Here's a link to long ago tutorial (stored on the Wayback machine archive) wherein the author demonstrates uv mapping a human figure with Wings3D alone. Even if you're not doing figure stuff the author explains the use of wings mapping tools at length. Just in case you were ever confused by some of the options. For me this was basically the missing manual for Wings UVing...

https://web.archive.org/web/20210411105734/http://quinlor.de/tutorials/fig_uv1.html

It still is very useful!

I was wondering when the artist's site was going to disappear. It was up for years and years. Yet another Poser resource vanished :(

Primorge, about  year ago I found some tutorials regarding mapping in Wings. At first I thought this was the absolute solution! But I tried following them, and there were quite a few issues.... things like the map not saving correctly, or I'd make numerous changes and then when trying to save Wings would crash or the changes just wouldn't save. It was very frustrating. However, based on your endorsement and using the link you provided, I'm willing to have another go at it. I'll let you know what happens -

Steve

Recent versions of wings I've found to be unstable. And older versions just don't work as well on a win 10 machine (I used to be a mac user). They also botched circularize to where it's barely usable compared to the way it used to be. There's a bunch of things. Admittedly Wings always was a little crashy with the UV editor, especially if you make sudden moves or are impatient with an unwrap, and really dense meshes. I always try to map at the lowest subdivision level for something and then process the maps a bit after the final subdivision level to fix introduced artifacts, usually an optimize stretching helps to relax after a subdivision of an existing UV. Wings performs much better with that workflow. I still use it primarily, for simple things, because I'm so much faster than in Blender, although at this point Blender surpasses it (especially with add ons) by miles.

Good luck.

Like some said here i also use  Ultimate Unwrap 3D Pro and highly recommend it.

I'm glad I never delete emails...my hotmail accounts may not like the thousands of emails i haven't deleted...but my registration is there when I need to reinstall :)
maybe an odd chance you kept yours?

I never keep serial numbers in emails: simply because I'm loosing them, either by deleting the wrong ones or because they're hidden in archives, lost among billions of other emails

I keep the executable as long as a text file containing everything for the registration in a folder, That's how I've just retrieved my old versions of Poser, from 6 to GameDev Pro...
By luck! 
I was about to throw away the hard disk containing these, among 6 others hard disks.. phew