So latest tool I've picked up is zbrush (yes I looked over mudbox but does not seem as efficient) and they have a nifty plugin called UV Master it uses mathmatical algorithms to auto determine seams then upon flattening it cuts, moves, and sews the seems and auto creates a uv map. I have not fully tried it but I did test it on my Swing Set Tower using the raw maya file since it imports it raw and ran it and it appeared to do about what I spent 30 minutes doing in just 5-6 seconds....so if you have used it can you please let me know if it is accurate uv map and unwrap? as in all the way around, or if it is just single sided....according to the document it should have separated and sewn properly all sides but again I have not textured and tried yet still trying to learn the interface.

Zbrush is cool, just to bloody expensive. Nothing beats sculptris when it comes to making highres meshes for normal maps. Very easy and totally free to use. Sculptris would of been the best app out there, but pixologic got there greedy mits on it and now take credit for it. There Quote: A gift from pixologic.: Nope not even close, a gift from Doctor Peter who they purchased sculptris from just so they could kill any further development on it. Sad really, could of been one of the great ones. Those who havent tried Sculptris should.

Good info, but more or less I was wondering specifically about the plugin "UV Master" and its auto mapping and unfolding based on symmetry and poly groups. As far as normal maps I am looking into this but I am also looking into NDO plugin I still need to learn baking as well but I am assuming that is an easy process to learn.

Alright so my day is over and I had time to try it out finally. I just threw together a very quick kitchen table in maya exported to obj; imported to zbrush opened zplugin uv master clicked work from clone, clicked symmetry and then unwrap, then flatten to check and make sure it mapped, it did so copy uv then went to original and paste uv (via uv master again); added uv map texture, then export.



I dont know why there are points on the uv map probably user error I would imagine but this is my first go at it



honestly I like it, it does break it down quite a bit on its own and the more you add the smaller it puts stuff together now if you dont like this

simple create poly groups (takes like 1-2min) and have it unwrap by poly group to avoid split objects, you can also control map it and tell it what areas to protect from uv seam.



One final thing worth noting before posting photos of the outcome below, you can also poly paint and if its already unwrapped you create texture based on poly paint, meaning you do not technically need photoshop except to export dds also if you have an odd uvmap this makes it easy to texture in real time, btw if you texture anything inside and add roughness etc, it can export all maps (normal, specular, diffuse, etc...)



and you can set uv snapshot size in one click to low res, 1080, 2k, or even 4k.

zbrush is a great bit of kit but its really only good for organic modeling such as characters ,the uv tools are there to help speed up the process of mapping a high poly mesh ready for painting & are not really that good for low poly game models.auto uv mapping software is great for a quick start but it is still best to unwrap your models manually the traditional way ,you have full control over everything from chunk size ,seam placement & uv layout making it easier to texture in the long run.

there is no real shortcut to uv mapping !! just learn the basics & the more you do it the faster you will get at it.

TRUST ME IM A DOCTOR

cheers henry

I can only agree with Henry on this one!

UV mapping can be annoying at times, I will even go as far as saying that it has stopped progress on a model of mine more than once! I got to the UV stage and stopped, I just couldn't face unwrapping it! Those models are still on my hard drive.....teasing me....calling me names!

When I saw the UV Master plug-in, I was like, "ooooh, something that does it for you?!" Then I saw the screenshots of the unwrapped models. Yeah, it does a good job, but, its all over the place! Nothing will unwrap a model better than experience. Just keep doing and it will become less of a task, you might even enjoy it one day! (I am still waiting for that day)

Cheers

Jay.

Well zbrush isnt only good for organic modelling, its the best tool when it comes to hardsurface modelling and you can create your own uvs for example by using polypaint and you can further split the model in groups and that way you get even better results. Anyways mastering zbrush takes time and its best to start with the interface. When it comes to baking, i would advice against using zbrush, you get much better results wit xNormal.

I am a little lost....because when you work from clone it actually clones only the absolute needed polygons so the mesh its actually uving is super low poly count. That is why you must copy the uv and paste on to your original mesh (which it does not know what it looks like since it only knows the low poly clone) so wouldn't that apply to either scenario?

as far as manual uv mapping, I hate it...I can do it, I just hate cutting, moving, and stitching and tools like this do this automatically.

also as you can see there really is no distortion to the uv map it created, and again could have been super cleaned up by simply poly grouping the objects ahead of time.

Also refer to this video to better understand what I am talking about if you are not familiar with poly grouping and poly islands.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpiDHCnzdes

In the end my personal experience (so far that is) is if mapped properly with poly groups and I do control paints then this tool should be able to uv map better than me and only takes 5 seconds to auto map. Today or tomorrow I will put together a harder object to uv map and see how well it can manipulate the uv's so we can see further how powerful this tool truly is.

There is a certain amount of 'snobbery' attached to auto uv unwrapping by the purists. What these folks forget is no one cares how you unwrapped and textured your models and if you work for a studio they only care that the job is done and the quicker the better.



ZBrush UVMaster is optimally designed for organic models, yes you can do hard surface models in ZBrush but it was originally designed as a sculpture toolset and UVMaster reflects this. You cannot unwrap models which have subdivision levels in ZBrush. what you could do is project the polypaint from the high to the low clone after subdividing your low poly and uv mapped model, then create your texture map from there.



Really for the kind of models your unwrapping here you would be better with a simple program like Lithunwrap (free) or Ultimate unwrap 3d.



All the same whatever you use to auto unwrap you should expect to do some manual work as well to finish it up. You will never get perfect uv mapping using auto.