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?

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

"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?

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

Thanks for the tip about resizing. I've tried scaling up but it doesn't help in most cases. The UVmaps that CL makes for their animals like in the image I posted seems to be created by the same method all of the time. I really, really, really need to know exactly how they go about making such flat one piece maps out of animals with legs going at right angles from their bodies. I would love some sort of detailed image based explaination from CL on how they pull of this miracle. -ScottA

It's just not working for me. Stitching separately mapped parts together would take me forever because I have hundreds of point to line up after remapping the legs and flattening them. Plus I have no idea where to stitch them to once they and the body are altered. There is no way I could stitch each point by hand. There are hundres of points in one area alone. I'd leave them in separate parts but then I get horrible seams if I do that. There has to be something I'm not doing right. When I use the relax function in DeepUV the mesh explodes off of the map. And the the other "advanced" relax options don't relax enough to make it as flat as I need. I'm obviously missing something. And I need a step by step tutorial badly. I can't find any tutorials on this specific type of model. And there aren't any UV mapping books at my local book stores. It's driving me crazy. The Poser horse is a good example model of trying to map a Z Axis body to four Y Axis legs.

Thanks for the links but they aren't specific enough to help me. They don't really address the problems specific to mapping a Z axis body with Y axis legs attached like in the example image. It must be something so simple that I'm missing it. Everything I read never works the same way when I try it. I think I really need an animal specific tutorial.

Hi Lyne, I closed my store here. So unfortunately that means I also lost the file locker option too. I'm having money problems. So That site is going to be closed at the end of this week. But the good thing is lot's of people have downloaded my things and you can ask anyone here for a copy. I like it when people share my models with eachother. Little Dragon has a copy of the Plesiousaur. I'm sure he'll send you a copy if you ask him. I'd e-mail them to you myself. But I'm no longer using my own internet connection. -ScottA

Thanks LilWolff. Anything on the site or in my file locker here is up for grabs. I don't have a wife or kids to worry about. But I do have family to stay with for a while. I just decided to stop the cycle of trapping myself into working for poor businessmen because I had a mortgage and Taxes to pay for. I guess you could call it Self Inflicted Homelessness. ;-) Fact is. I've just had it with bad business owners. So I decided to take my money and look around for a while and see if there is a smarter way to make a living. Maybe I'll just start running like Forest Gump. ;-) Who knows. I like the thrill of taking on the unknown. It's my "thing". I hear FEMA might be hiring a new manager soon.....Hmmm. ;-) -ScottA

Thanks for the offer. But I think Lilwolf already hosts them if I'm not mistaken.

Thanks for the offer, But I really don't like selling Poser items. I've sold a couple of items, but somehow It feels dirty to sell things. It's supposed to be a hobby. And for me, giving things away has always been the real motivation for making them in the first place.

Because I'm going away. The economy is aweful here in upsate N.Y. I can't find stable work around here anymore. So I sold my house and I'm going to take some time to spend with family and figure out if there is some way I can do something on my own. I probably won't have internet access for a while.

About 4 books ago I thought the last thing anyone would want is another Poser book. But they still keep coming. It seems that if a book is on the shelf. Someone will buy it.