UV Mapping Complex Geometry

[Guest]

Hey, I am working on a highly angular, complex model and I am having some difficulty working it out.

Since the right angles encroach on the angle limits of Blender's unwrapping tool, unwrapping makes this mess. Any tips to consolidate and simplify this would be greatly appreciated, since I have been staring at Blender being angry for the past half hour.

[Devo]

You are trying to map with a cube projection yeah? its not gonna happen (not easily anyway) Firstly, I would start the mesh all over again (thats assuming you made it yourself) Strip it back to 3 or 4 parts (from that picture, I can pic 4 parts that are duplicated to make it all up. Now, if you didn't make the mesh and ripped it from a 3D mesh site (which judging from the actual design of the mesh, is a possibility) then you will have a difficult time reverse engineering the whole thing to put into KSP.Besides that, your poly count on that model is extremely high! Ask yourself if it's worth texturing something that will only end up lagging the game out.

If you do re-do the mesh, For the panels, Texture ONE panel and then duplicate it as many times as required, this will save you UVmapping each individual one, thats just time wasting. To texture what you have there currently, I would use a View projection (within bounds) and do an overall wrap, otherwise you are going to be there forever.

[Guest]

Well I used Blender's "smart unwrap" and this is the result. I do have backups before the mesh was merged together, although each "fin" is actually a different size after I arrayed it.

I already remade the mesh to to cut it down to 5k polys. I guess before I reredo it, although before I do, could you give me a good number of polygons to shoot for? Or at least a value to never exceed?

[nothke]

Whenever you build a model, you should think about how to map it before you start. Especially if you have many repeating or hard-to-map-later surfaces.

And it depends how do you want the texture to look like. If every fin needs to be different texture (I don't mean texture file, but I mean.. paint), you'd have to map each. If you want the fins to have same texture, do the mapping first and then array it. If the whole thing is one plain color, it really doesn't matter. If you want to do an occlusion map on plain color, auto unwrap is good. If you want to do an occlusion map on a texture, well.. then you'll have to think one more step further

[Guest]

Got it all sorted out, thanks!

[electronicfox]

Google up some tutorials on UV mapping techniques, aside from that I reccomend Roadkill, its an unwrapping program that will do most of the hard bits for you.

[InfiniteDice]

I'd break any repetitive areas into separate sections, map them, then clone the hell out of it. Have it done in 10 minutes. Maybe 15... If you're trying to map the whole thing with one material it's gonna be fun making it all uniform. I'd make separate chunks have different maps per chunk...

Actually just read devogens reply... basically thinking the same thing.

Furthermore:

Anyone who'd launch that thing into orbit would likely do so in logical chunks. So really you should break it up into 6 - 8 sections that could be handled in an easy manner. Just my 2 cents

Edited May 7, 2013 by InfiniteDice

[ghost010]

so.. many.. triangles.. so many vertices.

i have 1 main rule when modeling for KSP.."Make it low poly..low as possible" let the textures do the rest