[GTA5] Using blender UV Layouts for photoshop editing

hello today I thought I'd go over how to export a UV layout for blender given a GTA 3D model this is useful for people who don't necessarily want to get into 3D modeling itself but the UV is helpful for people retexturing in Photoshop to see where their texture should begin and end what a UV is is basically taking the 3D model and unfolding it like origami and putting it on a 2d flat image that so you see where all of the seams begin and end basically the two things you're going to need that I'm not going to install live on video right here are going to be Cod Walker if you've never heard of code Walker before you don't know what it is there is a Discord I will link in the description the Discord is always going to be the most reliable way to get the latest version so I recommend I I don't I you I think it is on GTA 5 mods but that's not where you want to download it from I don't know that that's up to date and usually it is out of date so um just join the Discord there's a releases channel right at the top you just download the latest release from in there unzip it and this is what you should be looking at if you've never seen it before when I say codewalker you'll notice there are different exe's in here codewalker exe itself is not the one we're going to be using we're actually going to be using RPF Explorer so you'll see people um when they message in Discord they'll call it codw Walker RPF or CW RPF they mean this separate EXE and uh you obviously can launch this separately from Cod Walker itself so the thing if you're making a shortcut or anything to put on your desktop the RPF Explorer is what you want and when you open it up this is what it's going to look like this is basically every file in your GTA installation and this is how we're going to actually grab the model once we need it if the other thing to download is going to be blender if you're trying to decide what blender version you need what you're going to want to look at first then is the plug-in that we need to use with blender to get the GTA model actually inside blender that is going to be solemn's um this again has a Discord if you want to join it but it is live on GitHub it's public so you can just go to the GitHub and again I will link this in the description um if you're going following the instructions on how to install from the solemn's Discord you're probably going to be looking at this page this is going to be the latest release just make sure for whatever blender and whatever psms version you're using that the two match up that's the only important part you can see this PMS 2.4.1 is for blender 4.1 so if you're you know if you want to use this version then download blender 4.1 me personally I'm going to be using blender 4.0 and that's only because 4.1 just came out a few days ago so I haven't updated anything yet um but just make sure that you're matching versions whenever and if you don't know how to get to later older versions and stuff like that first of all if you're looking at this page you go over here to this releases button and if for any reason you were on the latest release it's again right up here you just go to releases and this will be all versions past and present of solns so uh for whatever version you're downloading there will be this assets drop down at the bottom if it's minimized make sure you expand it and you're going to be wanting to download this sols dotzip don't worry about the source code you don't need that you just want the sol. zip like I said I'm going to be using 4.0 so I'm going to be downloading the second oldest or second newest version of sols which is right here just click it and you'll get azip in your downloads and you just want to leave this as is the zip is what we're going to directly install into blender if you've never installed an add-on before you don't need to unzip it you don't need to open it don't do anything with it just leave it as a zip file okay so at this point I'm assuming you have Cod Walker installed you have sols downloaded and you have blender installed so let's actually install solms on video because a lot of people mess this up even though we all give the warning not to to unzip it people still mess it up so you're going to want to open up your blender you're going to be graded by this default scene it's going to be a camera cube and a light you can ignore all of that you want to go up here to the top left and do edit and preferences if you were not on the add-ons tab then click on to the add-ons and then press this install button and install it from where you just downloaded it so you can see I I have mine right here in my downloads and you can see I'm just clicking on the solemn dotzip again I cannot stress how important it is to just leave it as a zip everyone messes this up I don't know why but you're clicking the dot zip and you're pressing install add-on it should install it will probably autofill this search I have two of them you can ignore what you're seeing you should only see one of these I have two because I have an edited version that I made for myself but all you want to do is just once you see these solns and if you don't see it obviously there's this little search bar you can search for it and just activate it by checking this check box right here so now we have it activated it's ready to go anytime I install a new add-on what I like to do is just close out of blender and restart that way everything started up fresh and new and I know that everything is working so we have have sols installed we've got blender ready to go all we need now is our model uh there are two most common websites to look at for the model that you want to be using obviously there is Forge I have purposely logged out so that you can see what this looks like as a just a regular user if you aren't subbed to the patreon and you don't have any of the filtering options this is what it will look like for you sorry had a hiccup there um obviously if you have a sub it is going to be much faster to find things because you'll have this model file path unlocked and you'll know exactly you can just copy and paste this exact file path in codewalker RPF and it'll take you right to the exact thing that you're looking at here the other website and I just want to do this for transparency there is another website it is Toby dospace and I again I will link everything that I'm talking about in the description in case anyone's confused toby. space is um an older website it does not have the latest DLCs I think it stops right before the casino Heist dlc's so if you're looking for anything from the newer DLCs you will not find it you would have to use Forge and again like I said Forge has um the direct file paths and stuff like that so I'm not trying to advocate for one or the other I'm just trying to make you aware of like what you can use to look at models to find them before you like just to see what you want to edit you know um you the advantage of toby. space is that it has the prefixes named right underneath all of the files so you can uh you wouldn't paste this whole thing in code Walker RPF you're just going to want to paste this first part right before you get to basically whatever the component is if you are brand new to GTA modding this is your first time retexturing anything and you don't really know what's going on um for instance you don't know that jbb is shirts lower is pants task is going to be uh body armor and things like that you don't really know what these categories are I do have a Wikipedia page I wrote myself well it's not it's a get book but you know wiki page um that you can look at to learn what is what they aren't always you know feet is going to be shoes so that one's a little more self-explanatory but there are other ones like bird is masks for some reason so not all of them are straightforward and if you don't know them then you do want to study and understand like what you're trying to find beforehand today I am just going to grab something random um and I'm going to pretend like I want to find it manually just so that you you guys know how to do it so I'll just take this MP battle sweater this is going to be the male version I know there's a female one um so from the forge page all I know is that it is going to be in the MP battle DLC and then it's a jibb obviously and I let's assume I don't have a patreon sub and so I don't know the exact file path um like you see on the Toby dospace site this beginning portion is always going to be the same no matter what you're looking for as long as you're looking for free mode stuff so here is the actual prefix that you would use oops sorry I already had one typed out this is for M for male and F for female these two are it's always going to start with this like when you're going to search in codewalker RPF Explorer you can always start your your search by typing in either M this one for male or this for female and then whatever it comes on the end here after this final underscore is going to be your DLC name except for the MP part you do want to ignore the MP part so if I'm searching for something from MP battle then I'm going to type battle at the end here if I'm searching for something from the gun running DLC I would put in gun running if I'm searching for heist three then you're going to put Heist three and so on and so forth so you can always and then after you type the DLC at the end here you can just copy this whole thing go to code Walker RPF and paste it in the search bar and search for it so just in case anyone's unfamiliar they're always going to start off with this to get to the subfolder it's always going to start off the same way this is a prefix that you're always going to see over and over again um so let me I'll say like I'm just looking for this manually so I am going to type not Heist 3 but I want battle I'm going to press search and we're going to see some folders here not too many uh you might be looking at this and you're like hey why are there four different folders what the am I looking at great question so the first folder usually that you see I think if you sort by path it would be the best um the first folder that you see is going to be the original DLC folder like when it first came out into the game that is going to be all of the items from the DLC and then these other folders if you look at the path where it says DLC Packs slmp battle instead of the MP battle it will have these patch days so this is whenever they put out a hot fix after the DLC came out and for whatever reason they needed to change a model um they would put out these patch days so these are like edited versions of whatever you can see here this is a feat 002 for whatever reason when these first came out they were bugged in some way and so they came out with this patch day and for whatever you're going to be um editing you do want to grab the latest version so that is where Forge has the advantage because this model file path here will show you the latest of whatever it is it will tell you like if it is in a patch day folder that's been patched it will say that in the file path so that is the advantage otherwise if you're just looking for it manually um you can either just quickly go through these and just see that was an axe this is Feet 2 and obviously there's a back button here as well and this is jbb seven and eight and I don't think either one of these are going to be the sweater okay perfect so I know that my sweater that I'm looking for is going to be in the original DLC folder and so like I said that's just to grab the latest version of whatever you're working on and you it is important because I have seen them mess up as even especially the UV layout that we're going to be looking at they have messed it up before and then needed to fix it so you always want to grab the latest so you don't have anything messed up in game uh I don't know which jbb this is and if you're doing it manually this is what you're just going to be doing you're just going to be looking through these uh is that it I don't I think it is let me see if this is jbb 4 let me just scroll down and get the texture yes okay perfect so we have found our model relatively quickly and this is again like I said if you were doing it completely manually from the beginning so what we want now that I know it's jb4 is I'm going to go up to the model itself and it's going to be this JB 4ore .yd this could also be uncore R if you're using especially if you're looking at pants they tend to be either or um doesn't matter what the ending is as long as you're grabbing the ydd itself so we're going to right click and then export XML I have set up a little project folder for this so I'm just going to export to my folder and then the other thing I want is one of the textures just for a baseline to edit woo I chose something that was very patterned uh I'll just go with the first one it doesn't really matter to me so I will just right click on the a uni export XML to the same folder and now we're ready to bring it into blender so if you don't have blender open make sure that you open it you can delete from over here you can left click and drag and delete all of these by right clicking and doing delete hierarchy that's just the easiest way to get rid of them all and then what we're going to do now that we have a nice blank canvas is go up to file import and then codewalker XML and if you don't see this uh it is because you do not have the add-on actually activated in the add-on preferences like you didn't check that check box like we did earlier so just import it from the project folder that you have you can see I have my project folder here and then here is my yd. XML you don't have to worry about any of these options on the side it's not important to you for what you're doing so you can just press import cwalker XML and uh to zoom in and out if you're I'm assuming completely new to blender to zoom in and out is going to be your scroll wheel to rotate around like this you would hold down middle Mouse button and if you want to pan like this you would hold down shift so this this is uh middle Mouse button this is shift and middle Mouse button together and then this is scroll wheel so I I I find it intuitive but obviously I'm biased because I use this all the time so here we have uh the 3D model of our sweater what we're going to do and this is left clicking to select it you'll see this orange outline we're going to go with it selected go over to UV editing this tab up here and you will see something like this this is going to split your view into two different Windows you can see this bar in the middle you can move this to make one side or the other bigger you can zoom in individually on the left and right so it is you know like I said two separate windows and again I'm just going to pan and zoom in to get it a little straight in my eyes uh and so what you're looking at on the left here is your UV layout this is what this looks like if you look at the texture that we exported this is how it would lay out on this texture and if you want to actually preview that in blender what we're going to do is we're going to go up on the right hand window and we're going to go up to the top here we're in 3D viewport right now what we're going to do is go down here to Shader editor and I'm going to warn you that this is going to look scary when you click on it you're going to be looking at this and again same controls I'm doing middle Mouse button right here to move and scroll wheel to zoom in and out just zoom out until you see something that looks like this and you're like hey this looks like hell and I'm like yeah you're right it does but we don't have to worry about a majority of what's going on here all you have to worry about is if you zoom in slowly to the left here you're going to see these orange boxes and what you're looking for in particular is this Orange Box that says diffuse sampler the diffus image is basically the texture that you like that's the texture that everybody thinks is the texture in game so the thing that looks colors and patterns and all that like what you see first and foremost with your eyeballs that's called the diffuse image so to preview what we have is we just want to link up this diffuse sampler with the texture that we exported so go ahead and click on the X and then click open and go to your project folder and you might be looking this is probably what your project folder looks like and it's just this subfolder we have in here called JB whatever whatever a uni and you'll see this DDS file and that is our texture so just open image you can see it already popping in on the UV if you don't see it that's okay you're still okay don't worry if you don't see it on the left just go up to the top go back to 3D viewport and you're looking at the right hand side and you're like hey uh ain't changed and I'm like you're right so uh what we want to do here is depending on your screen size I know for mine I'm on 1440 so I have to scoot mine over a little I scoot that window over and what I want is this drop- down arrow on the right it's called the shading button we're going to go up click it go to color and then texture and you will see your nice texture pop in what I also like personal preference up to you I like to go lighting and I like to do mat cap instead of Studio lighting that makes it a little less shiny um and if you're looking at this and you're like hey all these orange lines are annoying you can wear in edit mode right now and if you somehow accidentally exited this mode you should know that just pressing tab will bring you in and out of edit mode with whatever you have selected so you select your object and then press tab you can go in and out of edit mode and you can see our UV layout coming in and disappearing over here um the other thing I would suggest is going up top left here and pressing this little button that has two arrows going separate ways this is UV sync selection this means that even if you are in edit mode but you don't have it selected you can still see the UV layout um you can see if I turn this off and I don't have this selected it won't show anything and it will show if I do have a piece of it selected it will only show the piece I have selected over here with UV sync selection on we can see the whole thing and then the piece that I have selected is in Orange and you might be wondering uh why it's grabbing these pieces down here that's usually because it's like uh connected like I first of all I don't I don't know what rockstars doing with this down oh I think they just overlapped I guess all of the Hem is just smooshed down here this is their choice they their artistic choices um you won't always it'll so I feel like I picked a bad model I'm having regrets but uh you won't sometimes you will see that I guess it's a good example sometimes you will and sometimes you won't see this this is just an easy way usually to save space is is if you have something on a 3D model and you it's going to be the same texture over and over again for instance you can see up here I think this is a button where oh no this is the inside of the shirt okay that's a weird tiny spot for it but I'm not judging um usually what you would see this stacked up stuff like this is for buttons like they're all going to look the same so they don't need to you don't need to have seven circles all spread out across your image so it's just like a space saving thing um and you can see they did that for the inside I guess all of the inside is just going to look the same so when you're looking at this this is actually like several different uh all of these circles over here all piled on top of each other and that will happen you'll so just so you know it's not too important for when you're texturing I think that doesn't change too much other than you just need to be aware of it um I will tell you that when you're retexturing the limit of what you can do it like you can't move the UV without actually editing the 3D model itself and having to learn like basically all the 3D modeling steps so you know what you're seeing over here is what you're going to get as far as that goes like you can't move these and expect it to be moved in game it it does have to be where you see it in blender um so that's your only hindrance I guess but otherwise now that we see your shirt we see our UV model hey how do I get this out you can just select everything and to select everything you're just going to press your a as an apple key so you can sa have nothing and then it will just select all for me you're going to go up here to UV and then export UV layout and I will just export it to that folder that I uh so here I am and this my project folder and I'll just name it uv. PNG and just press export UV layout and uh without anything else you're done this is that's you're good to go you have your UV layout ready to go uh and here it is here's what it looks like you can see there is a little bit of a some mess going on really when it's stacked on top of each other like this you just have to know like basically where the mo outside most piece is and uh and you can use this as your layout for texturing the one thing I will say is if you can um as long as your computer can handle it if you can keep blender running while you're also doing whatever in Photoshop I would actually keep blender open or alternatively you can just kind of keep track ahead of time I guess if you wanted to label the UV in any way um in Photoshop or whatever the advantage of leaving it open as you work on your texture is you can refer back to this while you're working because you might be looking at this you might say okay yeah I see this UV layout like where it begins and ends but like these two sleeves up here which sleeve is my left sleeve and which is the right well if you have blender open you can just sit here and drag you know drag around select and you can say oh okay now I see that this is my left sleeve and you can go over here and you can go oh okay now I see this is my right sleeve over here which one is the front back I don't know let me just select okay that's my front piece so it's just easy when you're working to kind of like see what you're looking at um it's a helpful tool for for your texturing purposes the other thing I want to show you this is a little bit extra so you know if you're tired of watching I see this is 25 minutes already sorry I talk a lot but if you do want to preview your changes in blender you can do that what we're going to do I'm going to press Tab and exit out of object mode let me get set up with the texture and Photoshop okay so just really quickly I want to show you here I have my UV layout I'm going to Overlay it over this so I know where everything begins and ends great okay and so then what I want to do is maybe uh I'll just change the CU of the base and then let's also just I don't know put some hideous text here and I'll put test all across the front and of course it's helpful me to know oh look here's you know exactly where my front piece is so that's great I love that that is exactly what I wanted let me just merge these down I'll get rid rid of this and then export this texture so here we go export and then so now I have like my edited PNG and I want just a quick preview of what this is going to look like on the 3D model itself what you can do is exactly what we did before you can uh wo I don't know what that button is I'm scared okay so never never touched that button before in my life so just select your object go up again from 3D viewport go to Shader editor here you should already be Zoomed In from earlier to your diffuse sampler and just press the X press open and grab your image so you can see here is my test image open and don't worry if you don't see it on the left yet go back to 3D viewport and you can see in your 3D viewport it has changed if you just with your object selected press tab go to go back into edit mode you can see it update on the UV side as well and so now you can see my beautiful test text plastered across the front of this with a disgusting green inside that's great I love this shirt so much now and I'm ready to use this in game um otherwise I think that's it I think that's all I wanted to show I hope this went slow enough for even absolute beginners I hope there's there's no major questions but obviously there if there is I will keep the comments open um yeah this is that's how you get a UV layout to use for your texturing purposes have fun have a great day goodbye

Channel: Quixotic

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Id: SPg3aPxbano

Length: 28min 42sec (1722 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 14 2024