BA6 | Specialism #21

Unwrapping the UV’s on the Tree Stump

*FACE PALM* I totally forgot that I hadn’t unwrapped the UV’s for the tree stump that I made so I set out to do this after I finished unwrapping the rocks. I thought this would be slightly more difficult given the organic form of the stump but the UV’s actually came out really nicely and I was happy with the outcome! (Even if Maya did “fatal error” on me multiple times during the process!!) 

I started by selecting the main faces that go around the base of the stump and projecting a cylindrical map upon them.

 After a small amount of manipulation in the editor, mainly from my new best friend the “relax/unfold UV” tool, I was left with these beautifully unwrapped UV’s. 

 

I then started to unwrap the tree roots. I had to use the same method as I did for the rope and vines where by I selected similar faces and cylindrical map them, repeating the process until all the faces of the root were mapped, then I would sew the corresponding edges together in the UV editor and use the relax/unfold tool to re shape the entire root so that it was all in proportion. 

 

I then moved onto the areas of the stump that didn’t qualify for the initial cylindrical map I did at the start because they weren’t totally cylindrical; they were more side ways facing. Therefore I used the “select faces and perspective project” method which worked a treat because all I had to do then was find where they attached, in the UV editor, to the original cylindrical mapped area, sew the edges and perform another relax/unfold to reshape the UV’s.  

 

After this I did a birds eye view projection onto the top faces of the stump to finish up the last of the unwrapped faces. At first the projection looked flat and the checker pattern didn’t reflect the depth of the curves in the organic shape of the stump, however once I used the trusty unfold/relax tool on them they looked much more accurate of the formation. 

Overall I am really happy with how well the UV’s turned out for the asset, I think considering how organic the shape is, the UV’s are well laid out and reflect the formation well which will, hopefully, translate well onto the textures!