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I hate to resort to posting a forum question, but this problem has me stumped.....

I've made an FPS hand (piccy) and it's quite nice if I may say so myself. I also bought Unwrap3D a week or so ago and set myself the task of UVing that hand. I found the most useful feature so far is being able to interactively pick polygons. It kicks ass - very intuitive. Anyway, my main problem is that most UV tuts are for simple objects. When you think about UVing a human, it's a pretty simple job. Most stuff can be planar UVed and stitched together if you want a single texture for a complex object.

However, this hand is a bit more tricky - you've got 5 individual fingers all of which need unwrapping. The palm and back of the hand are simple, it's the fingers which are stumping me. Surely, Unwrap3D can help me out rather than planar mapping 5 fingers from all 4 angles, each of which then need stitching. I tried cylindrical mapping on a finger, but I think the bends in the finger are confusing it.

Any pointers you could give would be greatly appreciated.

-- edit : I can supply the u3d file if anyone thinks they need it to understand what I'm on about.

box mapping pwnz!


I guess I just needed more than one night's patience

Yeah, you could also take the fingers off the model, then UV map them all as seperate boxes in the same texture. Then weld them back on the model afterwards. That stops you from getting one finger showing on another finger.

If you look at some professional-made UV maps of characters from 3D commercial games, the hands are
simply planar map on top and bottom. No tricky unwrapping is done, so you should only have to paint
the palm side of the hand, and the top of the hand. And for the seams where the two maps meet, you
have to overpaint, so the seam disappears. It's really simple. You're just making the problem
harder for yourself if you don't do it this way.

You are so right. I tried to UVmap some of my weapons
but I just don't know how. I tried many things but none of them
worked well and I just dont know what to do
I have also tried to talk with the author and he tried to help me a bit
but still no success. I need a good tutorial for something like this.

short tip:

if u're lucky to have set up the model pose mode with arms an hands horizontal (while is worst for later rigging) , you can use a plannar 2 sided mapping. Then the key is :

-go "spreading" the vertices in the visible areas where it does tangle coords. That is, exterior borders of the fat finger and the nearer one. Also in the thinest. And even in those, only in the exterior broders. As the inside borders are covered usually by other fingers. That's quick to do. Alsospearate/spread the tip coords, to give em a less distorted mapping, just is go separating vertices, giving it like an "exploded" expansion, u keep so more or less the actual proportions of each triangle.Not one by one thing doing the same, but more or less separating them the same, in an ordered net.
Final result is like if fingers had expanded.U could do this with all fingers, but no need as I told u. Mainly the 3 ones I told u, and even so , only in the "walls" that will be seen.

for selecting the vertices in the inside walls that get tangled (as are the sides in fingers, and are non paralell to "camera") you use better the split in 2 type of viewport organizations, u have an icon in the toolbar for this. Is easier, as u can select the vertex in 3d view, and separate it cleverly in the uv editor 2d window, ok?

If the arms are not horizontal, but in better for rigging 45º, then u do this same, but the first space will be camera mapping just rotating world in the 3d window till u have the hand paralell to you, so u see it well. uvmapping-->camera. Same with the back of the hand.uvmapping-->camera.

For selecting this tangeld "walls" vertcies is not so complex, as usually fingers are pretty low pol. I can uv map a hand in almost no time so, and usually ingame is seen perfect.

I have uvmapped it carefully each finger too, but usually it does not really worth it.