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Well the remove doubles is very hit and miss. Oh well. That's the way it is.
Is there a keyboard shortcut to toggle the 3D Manipulator widget off and on??
There is a sneaking trick to get Remove Doubles to behave better, scale the mesh really,really big (in multiples of 10 so it is easy do the math to scale back down). This usually allows you adjust the merge distant so it gets the duplicates without getting other verts that are just close.
This is a good point. I wanted to break it out because it might go unnoticed in the larger post. Tris in edge areas can create pinch points among other things. Generally, if one gets a tri in an edge area, we want to move that off the edge to a somewhat flat area if possible.
What is referred to as soft select in other software is the same as proportional editing in Blender, and... one cannot partially select vertices/polys etc... in any application, only effect them by varying degrees. The concept is the same. Just clarifying...
[Edit] Btw, I'm not trying to be nit-picky with this point, but rather was clarifying because it is an underlying concept in 3D software that will perhaps help make some things clear in different situations. Selection is always a binary operation. What one does with that selection often is not.
Ctl+Space Bar
What is referred to as soft select in other software is the same as proportional editing in Blender, and... one cannot partially select vertices/polys etc... in any application, only effect them by varying degrees. The concept is the same. Just clarifying...
[Edit] Btw, I'm not trying to be nit-picky with this point, but rather was clarifying because it is an underlying concept in 3D software that will perhaps help make some things clear in different situations. Selection is always a binary operation. What one does with that selection often is not.
Okay - good to know. I thought the OP might have had in mind the "fuzzy selection" that GIMP (+PS) has... where you can have areas "partially" selected, a sort of semi-transparent selection.
Well that does bring up a good point. Some 3D software does have a 'mask' feature similar to 2D applications, but the mask is related to effects applied to the selection.
HOLY CRAP..... Blender to ZBrush bridge is here!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2ZSxxWmrQc&feature=em-uploademail
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Import-Export/GoB_ZBrush_import_export
Works just fine too. Faster then the GoZ to and from DAZ Studio actually!
Ctl+Space Bar
Thanks. That works very nicely. Sped up my workflow quite a bit! :-)
No problem... most people just leave it off as soon as they get used to the shortcut keys, which is pretty fast since they are so straightforward r=rotate, rx=rotate x, s=... you get the picture ;)
Changed the title of the thread since this is a very informational thread at this point.
So in all that I've learned from all that participated I thank you and hope that others picked up some useful pointers and links to help them in their endeavors.
Finally got all the loop zone merged done. Took a while but I feel good about the work. I then went through on the breast/pec area and softened allot of the sharp corners in hopes that any pinching that might occur will be lessened. Exported the suit and brought it into DAZ Studio and it looks awesome. Imported the full suit back into Blender. I think I will use that to do the UV Map unwrap, unless someone instructs me otherwise. If using the halved suit with the mirror modifier is better and easier then so be it.........
So now I need to UV Map it and would like to do that in Blender as well. So need to hunt down tutorial for that, one that makes use of marking the seams for unwrap since that seems to give the best results from my past attempts. If anyone has a link or two handy please post.
I wouldn't' mind a ink to a couple of handy UV Unwrap tutorials for Blender.
That said, however, the one thing I've discovered is that when I have a mesh with a lot of polys (faces) and I unwrap, I wind up with a lot of verts from different polys attached, and a far as I know, there's no way to "fix" that. What I tried though, is to select Smart UV Project, which pops up a dialog, and I change the second of the three options from 0.00 to 0.05 and click OK, and I wind up with a tiny alley between the faces so no verts are attached. (See attached screenshot)
Found the set of tutorials I like. It's here:
http://cgcookie.com/blender/cgc-series/creating-a-little-cartoon-turtle-in-blender/#header
It's not free though. It's a $10.00 per month recurring fee which you can cancel any time. I figure for that sort of loose change I can afford it. I notice one thing about all this... I'm not buying as much 3D content as I was previously. I guess when I buy stuff sometimes it inspires me in some way but I never use most of it which I find odd until the other day I thought AH HAH! I know why, because I'm getting more and more into creating my own stuff. Now when it comes to shaders and stuff like that I'm still buying that sort of stuff for convenience sake.
I'm going to politely disagree with this. I would never use smart unwrap on a clothing item (sometimes on a prop that's going to be shader-based). I would never depend on an automated UV unwrap unless you are using a texturing method that requires no use of an image editor (for e.g. some projection or painting methods in Zbrush, 3dCoat, Maya, etc.).
When I map a clothing item, this is what I do.
Plan out ahead what islands you want it to be divided into. For example, on a shirt, I usually divide it into front, back, and sleeves. This lets me put in physical seam creases at the areas where the UV seams will be:
-Around each shoulder
-Down each arm underneath
-Down each side of the shirt
-Across the top of each shoulder on the shirt section (not the sleeves)
This makes texturing much easier (real fabric is not "seamless" across those areas so my textures need not be, either). On pants the seams usually go up the inseam, straight down the middle crotch area, and sometimes up the outside depending on the pair of pants. You can decide on a bodysuit if you need to split it at the waist or not.
Try to think of it on the default square template if you can so that shader texturing isn't completely ruled out. The only thing I use narrow templates for now are usually belts or necklaces (things that really NEED a long UV).
Use symmetry across the axis via mirror modifier only where it's practical. I decide this on a per-project basis.
When you have an idea what areas you want to lay out on the map, then start putting in seams to define those areas. To do that you select the line of verts that you want to form a seam and press ctrl+E and choose Mark Seam. (There's a Clear Seam option on that same menu if you change your mind or need to fiddle with them more.)
When you think you have your seams where you want, press U in the main 3d window to Unwrap. Now you have a bunch of islands visible in the UV window. You can manipulate these as you like with rotating and scaling, etc., although I would be cautious about scaling them vs. each other. Remember, the main unwrap will basically scale them so they can all use the same texture size. If you scale them vs. each other you can have the arms look like they have a huge fabric print where the body looks like it has a small one.
Try to rotate them so that everything can go the right direction if it were laid out on a piece of fabric. You probably don't want one neck area up and the other one down, for instance. It's normal for sleeves to be at right angles to the main "grain" of fabric in a lot of outfits. The rule of thumb I use is waist/neck areas toward the top of the 3d window, hem/ankle areas toward the bottom.
Next post: more complex fixing of the islands.
This is the part where the newb user usually gives up and ends up with a terrible tiling texture no one can draw on. I've been there, and you can avoid it!
Blender's unwrap does not produce perfect results, especially on a more complex object with lots of polygons. This is where pinning and live unwrap are your friends. For example, maybe your "front" section looks weirdly bendy where it's basically straight and vertical on the model.
First go to the menu on the UV window called "UVs." Turn Live Unwrap on and Choose Proportional Editing--Disable.
At that point you should select the line of verts that is straight up the middle of the wonky island in the UV window (alt right click works in the UV window just like the 3d one). Press P to pin this line of verts. Now press W to bring up your options menu and choose Align X. This yanks those verts into a straight line and usually gives you a much better shape. Moving any individual vertex that is pinned will affect the shape of the island too, so if some are too close together after alignment you can drag them into a better position. L selects all connected verts.
That part is important because on some areas, especially leg sections, yanking something into a straight line is a bad idea. In that case you may need to select a couple of vertices at different ends of the section, pin them, and drag them around to a more reasonable shape and position. I often use waistband areas for this because they're more likely to have kept a scale and proportion relative to the rest of the mesh after unwrap.
If you have trouble figuring out where a poly or vert on the UV map is vs. where it is on your model, there's a tiny button at the bottom of the UV screen that looks like a gray cube with two yellow verts. When you hover over it, the tooltip says "Keep UV and edit mode mesh selection in sync." Clicking this will cause verts and polys to be selected or deselected identically on the model and in the UV screen. You don't want to use it 100% of the time because it causes odd behavior at seams, but it's useful for figuring out where things are.
Great tips. Watching Part 3 of the tutorials that I've also got permission to download for later viewing if I so desire (nice perk to CGCookie) I got my seams made. See below.
Now, I've a question. He talks about "Select All" It's probably some keystroke and click that I don't know about yet. I know about the Circle Select and the Border Select but have no idea how to just "Select All" in order to get the suit selected fast for unwrapping.
Press A in edit mode.
YAY... thanks! :-)
Select -> (De)Select All ;-)
UV-unwrapping is (imho) an art - there are a very large number of ways you can assign space on a texture to a 3D object. Some of those ways will be "better" than other ways - ie easier to create textures for, and easier to line up details. There also are very few hard-and-fast rules - almost every layout has an application for a certain issue.
The things I've noticed so far (after watching a few tuts, and doing a good deal of unwrapping), is that keeping the unwrapping "even" is generally worth it. This means that when you look at your shape using the "UV test" texture, that the squares are reasonably evenly distributed across the entire mesh. No areas where the squares get significantly stretched or squished. This "rule" can be broken if you need more detail in a certain area (eg looking at the UV-mapping for V4, the head has a much denser mapping than the body, because we expect to see more detail in the face area, than the rest of the limbs/torso etc). For clothing though, you don't really expect to see a super-detailed cuff and non-descript sleeves (unless you were doing ultra-fancy lacey cuffs or something X). Perhaps somebody later might want to sew a decal into the sleeve, or put some stitching, or even just use a patterned shader on it - regular UV-maps will be received very gratefully in those cases.
Keeping the unwrapping "even" across separate textures is optional - ie if you have one texture for the pants (front and back), and one for the shirt (front and back)... then it would be convenient when creating textures to have the pants texture twice the size of the shirt (roughly) - because the size of pants is (roughly) twice the size of a shirt. If you do that, then the texture pixels will be _roughly_ the same size around the belt area, which will help avoid a jarring "jump" from one texture to the next. Of course, if you're using high-resolution textures all over (4000x4000), this sort of thing is far less noticeable.
The other thing that is convenient (as SY mentions above), is to straighten up the UV-map for edges of the clothing that would normally be straight when making it for real (eg leg seams and arm seams). The unwrapping of an arbitrary mesh is unlikely to produce perfectly straight seams, so you'll have to clean that up manually. The advantage though will be immediately apparent when you want to try putting sewn detail down the seam (eg stitches in denim) - you don't need to try and morph the stitch to match an irregular UV-map, but can just fill along the straight line. "A stitch in time saves nine..." although in this case, "A straightened UV-map in the beginning saves nine..." (^_^)h.
Sorry, no pictures this time, just a lot of waffle - don't let all this deter you - just go ahead and UV-unwrap whatever seems workable, and see how it goes. You'll fairly quickly learn what is "good" and what isn't - and then go back and unwrap again with that experience under your belt (^_^)d.
I'm going to politely disagree with this. I would never use smart unwrap on a clothing item (sometimes on a prop that's going to be shader-based). I would never depend on an automated UV unwrap unless you are using a texturing method that requires no use of an image editor (for e.g. some projection or painting methods in Zbrush, 3dCoat, Maya, etc.).
When I map a clothing item, this is what I do.
Plan out ahead what islands you want it to be divided into. For example, on a shirt, I usually divide it into front, back, and sleeves. This lets me put in physical seam creases at the areas where the UV seams will be:
-Around each shoulder
-Down each arm underneath
-Down each side of the shirt
-Across the top of each shoulder on the shirt section (not the sleeves)
This makes texturing much easier (real fabric is not "seamless" across those areas so my textures need not be, either). On pants the seams usually go up the inseam, straight down the middle crotch area, and sometimes up the outside depending on the pair of pants. You can decide on a bodysuit if you need to split it at the waist or not.
Try to think of it on the default square template if you can so that shader texturing isn't completely ruled out. The only thing I use narrow templates for now are usually belts or necklaces (things that really NEED a long UV).
Use symmetry across the axis via mirror modifier only where it's practical. I decide this on a per-project basis.
When you have an idea what areas you want to lay out on the map, then start putting in seams to define those areas. To do that you select the line of verts that you want to form a seam and press ctrl+E and choose Mark Seam. (There's a Clear Seam option on that same menu if you change your mind or need to fiddle with them more.)
When you think you have your seams where you want, press U in the main 3d window to Unwrap. Now you have a bunch of islands visible in the UV window. You can manipulate these as you like with rotating and scaling, etc., although I would be cautious about scaling them vs. each other. Remember, the main unwrap will basically scale them so they can all use the same texture size. If you scale them vs. each other you can have the arms look like they have a huge fabric print where the body looks like it has a small one.
Try to rotate them so that everything can go the right direction if it were laid out on a piece of fabric. You probably don't want one neck area up and the other one down, for instance. It's normal for sleeves to be at right angles to the main "grain" of fabric in a lot of outfits. The rule of thumb I use is waist/neck areas toward the top of the 3d window, hem/ankle areas toward the bottom.
Next post: more complex fixing of the islands.
OK, I have to admit I've not tried modelling clothing in Blender, so now that you've mentioned this, I suppose I'd agree. I do mostly props of all sizes, and I find that unless I do it that way when I unwrap in Blender, I get those joined verts, especially with high poly counts. Needless to say, the cube I used for the screenshot probably wouldn't have given me that kind of problem if I had not done it that way.
Now I'll be reading your comments here more closely (and saving for future reference) because I'm sure at some point in time they're going to come in handy.
Tried upwrapping my suit in Blender before leaving for work. It's OK. I need to read through Shay's information to do it by hand. I'm still getting used to the tools for doing this though. Used to select, grab and move or rotate. Blender does this a bit differently. I did "GET" how after I fiddled for a while but still wish there was a way to select and just move the bits where I want. Rotation was fairly easy. Found that by putting the 3D cursor in the middle of what I'm trying to rotate and hit "r" it was very intuitive. "Click" and your done.
Like to know how to get the little colored squares to show on the suit though. Couldn't figure that out. I have one I downloaded from the internet that will be good but if Blender has a built in one that's cool too.
Little colored squares like the UV Test Grid?
Scroll down to New Image here: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Textures/Mapping/UV/Applying_Image
Yes, that's it. Thanks. More reading! lol
Welcome to Blender. :D
Hahaha! Yea, it's cool though. Blender actually does what it says it does so I'm good with it. First modeling program I'm actually getting. Kinda like Photoshop. Folks always said "Photoshop is so hard to learn so try this one" or "that one" or "this other one". I tried them all and when I finally got a copy of Photoshop to try it was so intuitive to me. Now mind you Blender is NOT all the intuitive and I need to make my brain record all the keystrokes to make this easier on my work flow but yea, everything works and woks extremely well.
I'm so thankful for all the help here. I reach out and folks are there. Reminds me of "ME" when I was the star teaching folks how to use Xara on a forum I used to moderate. I always say "share the knowledge".
:-)
Hmmm, this is really not getting into my head very well. I'm so lost in this area.
I tried following the instructions but I'm looking at what I've done and it was just so messed up I X'd it out.
I have 22 material zones. Does this mean I have to create this same set up for each and every zone? If so nope, not going to do that. I'll export it and apply the texture to the whole thing in DAZ Studio and go about it like that.
What's confusing is that there are two areas to load up maps. Material and Textures. To me that seems redundant. Perhaps I'm just frustrated but yea, seems redundant.
Any YouTube vids out there showing how to set up this sort of thing? I really need visuals on this one.
Gracias
(nvm - probably more confusing than helpful).
Jason Welsh has some good videos on this.
As it is I ended up in my go to program called Ultimate Unwrap 3D Pro and got most of it. The arms are still showing some stretching so need to figure out what UV mapping to apply to them to get them looking right. I tried cylindrical but that made a mess. I think I tried Box with two sides and that wasn't good either. That's the problem with such a bit project, esp one that is going to be shared with the community, getting the UV mapping looking as good as possible.
Thanks so much Gedd! I'll go watch now!