UV Map a Toy Dinosaur in Maya 2022

hey guys it's monica at academic phoenix plus and welcome to the next part of this tutorial series which is going to be to uv map this little dinosaur in the last tutorial we went over how to model it so make sure you take a look at that i'll leave a link below and now it is time to uv map it so you can get it ready for texturing if you're new to this channel i post 3d tutorials on a weekly basis including maya zbrush and substance painter among others so if that is your sort of thing please consider subscribing so bring out your creativity open up that software and let's go ahead and get started i just completed this cute little model of this toy dinosaur and now i'm ready to uv map it so the first thing we want to do is go up here to the top right and there's a workspace right now i'm in general let's go to uv editing and this will pop up the uv editor all of its tools and my little dinosaur right here now if you guys are find this distracting you can also turn off the resolution gate which is what i'd use to make a render now i can get closer all right let's take a look at the uvs um i'm going to turn this little grid off so i can take a look at it oh that's that's not looking great and of course all of these need a lot of love so one of the first things you might want to consider doing is just trying uv map ink up here at the top and try automatic and i'm not a big fan because usually automatic will give you a million pieces also if you haven't done so i i highly recommend that you center the pivot delete the history and freeze those transformations so that if you do want to use um automatic mapping it will not take those transformations into consideration now up here at the top with these little scales i'm not sure what they are i'm not a dinosaur expert i have no clue what these little guys are but they're cute automatic actually will work because i can stitch stitch these things together but let's focus on the body and then move from there all right so i'm going to be focusing on the body first and then the tail and we only have a couple of options to uv map and we have cylindrical planar and spherical i rarely use spherical i usually have a tendency to use cylindrical or planar and then of course we have automatic which works sometimes so what we want to do next is select our faces so i'm going to go to faces and i guess i already selected everything but let's go ahead and deselect the pieces that we don't want now remember i am in uh smooth preview so if i hit one that's actually what it looks like three is just a nice smooth preview all right let's go to uv's cylindrical map and you're gonna notice that i can close this projection because it is a full projection and you're also going to notice that my seam is right here in the border edges is kind of lopsided so what i'm going to try to do is click on this little t down here at the bottom and just slightly rotate it hopefully i can get a better cut i'm trying to make sure that that line is not all over the place that it actually is as straight as possible now i'm still going to need some uh to do some cutting and stuff like that but that's okay now the reason why i'm choosing to put the seam back here instead of maybe on the side it's because my reference image which let me bring back up over here pink there's no seams on the side so to me that means that the stitching is actually happening in the back which i am going to do my best to hit to make sure i get that so i clicked on this little guy right here so i can hide my reference layer and actually i should call this reference layer because i was confused but like which one what's layer one on layer two see that one that's what happens if you don't uh label everything okay let's take a look at the grid now and the grid's looking a lot better but there's definitely areas of improving and we can also turn this little guy right here which will show us um that we do have some overlapping uvs and let me hide my plane here it's definitely room for improvement so for the legs i'm actually going to go ahead and select the legs like so and i'm also going to cylindrical map and it looks like i accidentally selected way more than i was supposed to so that's one of the reasons why turning off this grid is actually helpful so let's just go back into gray and let's make the selection of my little legs and somehow i keep selecting things that are not supposed to be selected um you know if you use the manipulator it kind of tells you the center of all your selections so if i click on this you'll notice that the manipulator moves i use this manipulator to help me make sure that i didn't accidentally select faces that are not supposed to be there so let's go ahead and cylindrical map this whoop i'm gonna move it aside i know it's crazy at the bottom but i'll take care of that in a second i'm going to go ahead and let's go ahead and grab these that looks pretty good you map selenico map [Music] just a little line right here i'm going to see if i can grab click on the little red t and then maybe slightly rotate the projection and it's nice because now i can actually instead of doing cutting and sewing and everything oop i missed the face of course is let's grab that face and try again uv silicone map all right let's grab that little t again click on this and just kind of slightly rotate it so that seam is like that so instead of cutting and sewing i can actually rotate my projection to see if i can get a good cut now what i could also have done was put make sure the seam is actually inside the leg which i am going to do in a little bit i could have done it in the projection but i also think it's important to show how to cut and sew okay now i'm going to grab the body and move it aside and this is going to be the tail so with this i am also going to uv map cylindrical map and i'm going to close it but the projection is going up and down and my tail is more like going left to right so click on the little red t click on that little blue circle and just going to slowly rotate it until you get a better projection so you can see here that it's actually working it's not going to be perfect because this is an organic shape but it's better than what it was also don't forget that you can also manipulate it here on the right if you guys are having a hard time rotating it you can in fact rotate it right here this is a fancy trick if you hold down ctrl and middle mouse and drag on the number you can actually change the rotation right here so if you want to you can go ahead and move things around all right the tail looks pretty good all right so now that we've done projecting the next thing is going to be to unfold now if you guys are new to uv mapping i highly recommend that you watch my series it is for maya 2018 however the theories and all of the buttons are still basically the same so take a look at that because it is really helpful it actually goes down through every single step including explaining every single projection it talks about all the methodologies behind uv mapping so check it out if you're new to this otherwise feel free to follow along alright so next i'm going to grab faces and i'm going to take a look at my uv toolkit over here i'm going to go ahead and click on unfold and see what i get i'd like to look at my uvs now it's up to you if you guys want to keep it like this but i am going to cut the disconnect the head from the body so i'm going to double click on this line shift right click and go to cut and now i'm going to go to double fake double click on my faces click unfold and i think that's going to get me better results on my uvs and then i'm going to double click on this one and also click on unfold which will give me better uvs as well all right so what i'm looking at is deformation to see it is a circle so you know we have to take that into consideration that spheres are really hard to uv map but as long as they look okay okay and the seam is also looking okay so we're gonna do the same thing for the legs i'm gonna double click and maybe turning off the grid for now double click on the leg and click unfold [Music] see how that looks like and what i mentioned earlier is that i actually wanted to move that seam into the center or inside the body so what i'm going to do is find out what an edge that is and then i'm going to kind of go down here and see which way i want to cut it so maybe i want to cut it this way i'm going to go ahead and shift right click cut for the people that want it the long way you can always go over here to the cut and sew and do it that way then i'm going to select these edges and then i'm going to shift right click stitch together shift right click so because now they're basically together and again double click on faces and unfold so that's kind of like the method behind it not a big fan of having these things just floating around so let's go ahead and reduce those border edges and again anytime you do something like that you should go ahead and click on unfold all right let's see what that looks like pretty good actually moving on to the other leg i'm actually going to cut the edges first so i hope you guys don't mind that i go a little bit faster i just want to make sure that i accomplish this in you know a reasonable amount of time and hopefully you guys know how to do this so again shift right click cut gonna grab these side edges turn that off shift right click stitch together whoops that did not work as well as i wanted so that usually means that the cut is not all the way through so here it is right here let's make sure we select that edge cut grab these guys over here [Music] shift right click stitch together and let's go ahead and unfold double click unfold [Music] grab these edges and let's go ahead shift right click so and it's up to you if you want to sew these two but i think i'm leaving them at that double click shift right click you can unfold here if you want to so feel free to do that let me get these guys as well i might as well just get all of these so again my goal is to reduce border edges unfold all right let's take a look at that okay um so we have the body we have the head and we now have to focus on the tail so the tails is pretty good place but i do need to do a better job cutting i'm gonna grab that edge and i'm also going to go all the way down here shift right click cut and then i'm going to grab the edges so they can move to the other side specifically this one here shift right click stitch together grab those faces and unfold ooh lost something here what is this mysterious okay no problem there let's go ahead and double click on these two click unfold and then we can find a home for them so that would be i guess right here and here so shift right click stitch together and again select those faces unfold let's take a look at that and that's looking pretty good all right now for the head i can show you a different type of cut this is known as the football cut usually i do this for more complicated shapes like human heads but let's see if it does a better job i'm a little worried about the way it's distorted so the football cut basically is you're gonna go up here and we're going to i'm going to make it more like a y so the cut is going to be more like this and then i'm going to shift right click cut and then i am going to sew these edges together but let me make sure that i got everything here like these guys should probably stitch together so let me go ahead and sew it's going to look a little crazy but let's double click and unfold and see if that gives me better results so this is known as the football cut up here at the top i have some loose edges so let me go ahead and sew those as well i'm just going to click on sew there we go so this is known as the football cut and it works really well with heads so i have a video tutorial on that if you guys are curious let me go ahead and unfold and let me see if that grid looks a little better it does look better especially more just less distorted in the back i could probably make that football cut a little longer which i think i am going to do so let's go ahead and select these edges here i'm going to cut and i guess i'll cut this way too so it's even shift right click cut and then oh my goodness i'm going to go ahead and shift right click so again once you're done with that double click unfold and let's see if that distortion is less so that looks way better than what it was before nice i'm okay with the body let's move on to this one so already uv map this one or at least a automatic map but we want to avoid border edges so let's go ahead and make some selections and stitch together these guys are going to be sewn these guys can also be actually let's leave those alone and then we're going to double click on these guys here because i want to stitch together great and then the mystery here we might as well go ahead and all right they don't have a home so these this one does stitch together all right let's go ahead and double click on these guys and hit unfold let's take a look at the grid and that looks pretty good to me now here's the cool thing and again i'm going to move this aside [Music] now the cool thing is that these are the same objects so i get to transfer the uvs shift select the first one shift double shift select the other one and then go to mesh transfer attribute options and then make sure you have component when i reset my settings you literally just need to click component and then transfer and then the uv's transfer so click shift click i'm going to click on the letter g which is my last command which is transfer uvs then i'm going to do that really fast so again i'm just clicking on the letter g which is my last command and my last command was transfer uvs so now i have all of this uv mapped except for the arms and the little eyeballs so the arms we can definitely trying to just uv map it uh automatic and see what we get never see i i never unders i don't know i just don't think it works i i'm just better off you know using like cylindrical i'm going to close it i'm going to click on that little red t to rotate it and then so my projection is more facing it in this direction something like that again click on that if you lost it no worries click on the little red t look for that circular manipulator and just kind of eyeball it so that it basically follows the projection of the object so my object is kind of more rotated upward so that's what i'm going to do it's not going to be perfect but that's okay and if you want to and if you're clever enough this area here is where the seam is going to be so if you want to you can move it somewhere where you're not going to see it while you're in this projection mode i'm going to hit the plus sign to give me myself a bigger manipulator and then i'm going to go ahead and rotate it so again i'm just trying to get this projection to go a little bit lower so something like that it's not perfect definitely not perfect but it's getting better [Music] it's a good start all right let's go ahead and focus on this part here i'm going to double click on it unfold to see what i got actually that's not too bad let me take a look at the seam that's not too bad either but definitely can avoid some of these border edges so let me go ahead and turn off this shift right click uh so and so and again double click unfold let's take a look at that and that i think is going to be okay all right this one is the same thing as the other side so selected shift select mesh transfer attributes and voila just like that we have this object though it does look like it gets separated somehow so let me see something here the uvs are not together which is odd so that's an easy fix just grab your v these shift right click and i am going to just um so go ahead and stitch to get uh so and then i'm just going to go ahead and just do it the old-fashioned way which is just click on this deselect the top [Music] cut and unfold all right let's take a look at this one uh this one almost looks like it's ready to be is ready to go but let's go ahead and go to uv planar mapping options i'm going to choose camera make sure keep image with aspect is on and apply and then i'm going to double click on this one again and unfold since i have that selected i might as well transfer uvs as well so shift click this one then go to mesh transfer attributes and there we go so again for what some reason it i think because it got flipped the uvs are all weird even though they look okay i'm not really sure what the issue is here it's a very interesting issue but if i click on sew it does a whole a whole slew of things actually that worked relatively um [Music] okay so i'm just going to double click on faces and then unfold and okay that one worked out better makes me wonder about the arm all right i'm going to rotate it a little bit because i feel like it's not really sticking out as much and we have our oh our uvs let me delete all the history freeze to transformations and all that jazz and next i am going to click on another button in here which you can find under transform we can click on get and then set and what it's going to do is that it's going to make sure the text hold density is the same so that means that they all share the same texture information so the head and the skin the little scales and the arms all share the same amount of space in the uv maps so let me collapse all this and i'm going to click on the button on not unfold oops let me go to layout and click down here and go to layout and there you go it kept all the information which is great um it is up to you if you guys want to keep it like this i definitely think one of the things that you need to think about as an artist is to fix it yourself so all these scales i'm going to basically put together and [Music] i'm going to try to keep them about the same so i'm just going to move them around see if i can squeeze them together i'd like to keep them together because it'll be easier for me to texture these are my little eyes so again i like they don't take much space so i'm just going to cram them somewhere else again my goal is i want to make sure these guys are facing kind of like the same the correct way so that means that i want to make sure my uvs are going up and down it just makes it easier for me if you're going to take it into substance painter or you know or if you're going to take into photoshop it's a little bit more predictable the tail looks okay to me so i'm just going to move it the body is over here and i'm actually going to go ahead and rotate it and see if i can squeeze it myself i'm going to turn the grid off so again what i'm trying to do is just make sure that these things are facing the way i want to face it so here's the head here's the body and then here is the tail so it will be easy for me to texture it this way um this is the leg so i'm i'm happy with the legs there and i'm also hap move the leg down here [Music] i might have to move it here so let me grab these guys and just kind of move them up these are the arms i'll put them in a place in a moment but let me just get the legs here all right cool let me check these guys make sure they're facing a good angle so they don't look like they're going up and down so it looks like this method is probably the better one so i'm going to make sure the little line actually that one looks okay [Music] there we go okay there are the arms let me click on the arms and let's see i can place them here again the eyes can be anywhere uh let's see if i can nudge this a little bit more to the left let me slightly rotate this just to give me some space again i'm just laying it out myself so that i can texture it later and i'm going to move this arm down and whoa let's get closer here let me just rotate this here rotate this here okay let me take a look at the grid really fast actually it looks pretty good all right and now i'm going to cram everything up here oops this one's outside of the uv space so let me let this scale a little bit okay that's okay all right let me just kind of move things around here so this is going to be where the scales are okay and the eyes and let's click on this because anything outside of it will trigger the other texture so this looks good to me okay everybody that is my super fast way of showing you guys how to uv map hopefully that makes sense let me select everything and center the pivot delete the history for each transformations and our creature is now uv mapped okay so hopefully then everything is looking good i think that that's gonna get me what i need in the next video tutorial we are gonna start texturing this object i'm going to texture it uh using maya so it's not gonna have any might have a little bit of photoshop but in general it's all going to be driven by just uh basic textures um cool all right guys thank you so much for watching i really appreciate it hopefully you learned a trick or two uh uv mapping is considered part of the technical part of maya so be patient with yourself as you guys texture this little guy or anything really or uv map anything because it can be kind of challenging but you know it's also important so that you can get good uh textures if you like this video please like and share and of course uh hit the little subscribe button so that that is a message to letting me know that you're interested in these videos and that you want to see more so please subscribe and if you know an artist that might be interested in creating a little plushie toy please share that would be amazing i know some of you guys are following along if you are i would love to see you in my social media please tag me i'm an instagram tic talk facebook and twitter so if you want to tag me i would love to see your work it's always really exciting to see uh people's pieces um don't forget to take a look at academicphoenixplus.com that's where you can find free 3d models ebooks and so much more so take a look at academicphoenixplus.com again thank you so much for watching i really appreciate it keep creating and i will see you next time when we texture this little dinosaur i'll see you then

Channel: Academic Phoenix Plus

Views: 2,597

Keywords: 3d, cg, tutorial, how to, videos, uv map, uving, uv texture, unfold, projection, toy, dinosaur, maya 2022, autodesk maya, basics, texture, cute, pokemon

Id: KkgjJlVtSxo

Length: 24min 16sec (1456 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 17 2021