Questions about texturing/UV mapping in Max

[abaldwin360]

So, I'm ready to texture up my Enterprise model, but I'm having issues with the saucer section. When I use unwrap UVW (and use flatten map) it's wanting to put the top/bottom of the saucer at weird angles and breaking the outside rim of the saucer into several pieces, as well as separating all the windows.

So, long story short, I need help from the Max gurus out there in texturing this thing.

 

[wjaspers]

Seperate the top from the saucer and give it its own unwrap.
Unwrap the bottom and the rim together without the windows.
Give the windows a uvw mapping or model some interior boxes behind them.

edit: with such a simple shape as a saucer, you can make some maps and give the top, bottom, and rim there own uvw mapping instead of a unwrap.

 

[Gepard]

You don't want to use automatic mapping. It's best to lay out the UVs by hand. My usual technique for dealing with aircraft is to highlight the portions of the body I want to map contiguously in the 3D view, then use one of the UV quick map options*, either planar or cylindrical, to unwrap it. You should only need to do it three times for that: a planar for the top, a planar for the bottom, and a cylindrical projection for the rim.

ETA: If you toss the unwrap UVW modifier on the entire saucer, you don't have to separate out the top, bottom and sides like wjaspers says. You can do all the selection and projection after the modifier is in the stack.

*I hope I remember the name of that right.

 

[Vektor]

Trek ship saucers present some interesting UV mapping challenges. The way I've usually done it in the past is with one big texture planar mapped to the top and another to the bottom and the rim, but you have to use very hi-res maps for that to minimize pixelation on features like the radial gridlines.

Another approach is to use a tiled hull texture with a spherical or cylinderical UV map. This "bends" the rectangular map onto the round saucer and usually allows for a much higher level of detail using smaller, more efficient maps. It does have some drawbacks, like the fact that the texture gets compressed toward the saucer axis, which you can compensate for with some clever graphical editing on the texture itself. More than likiely, you will still need to do some UV Unwrap editing to even out texture distortions due to changes in the hull curvature, that sort of thing.