UV unwrapping

[Clavin12]

I am looking at the blender wiki at how to UV unwrap stuff but I'm running into a problem. Every time I unwrap an object it shows up in the UV panel as a square and as such I cannot properly texture anything. Does anyone know a way around this?

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

It's possible that you may need to apply an actual material to model prior to UV mapping the model/piece. What type of UV mapping did you apply to the model?

[Clavin12]

I'm using blender of course. I make a panel and set it to UV editor. I then make a new uv texture for my model. Then in edit mode i select the whole model and press u thus taking me to the uv unwrap menu. I select the firt option on the list which is unwrap. after that i find that the entire model is piled into a square in the UV editor panel.

[Warfreak]

Hmm, you tried moving verts around and seeing if the faces can be refitted?

I'm gonna have to pull up Blender and see this for myself.

[mrtwosheds]

Textures are square.
UV mapping is a task that requires input from an intelligent being, programs are incapable of understanding what a model is supposed to be or how to map its texture, none of the automated mapping options will produce an instantly usable mapping. Use them to get the appropriate type of mapping, and then manually position its parts relative to the texture square.

For example, you would probably want all six legs of a six legged walker to use the same part of a texture, the program does not know they are all legs and cannot possibly be expected to pile all the leg maps on top of each other on the left hand side and weld their vertex's so that all the legs look the same, It does not know that the body part of the texture is going to be on the right hand side so cannot put it there.

UV mapping and texture creation need to be done together as one task.
UVMap object and position its components, export uvmap texture, create the skin texture based on the uvmap texture positions, try it on the model.
Alter the skin texture or the UVmapping or the model and repeat process, until excellently textured model occurs.

[Clavin12]

I mean the object doesnt unfold like a peice of paper that was wrapped around it. I tried it on the blender monkey and it did it the way i wanted.

[VSMIT]

Clavin, when you UV map, in edit mode, select all of the faces you'd like to place.  Then hit 'u' to open the UV Unwrap dropdown.  Select different types of mapping to see what they do.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Every UV map even when unwrapped still seems to contain overlapping lines. This is where the model maker needs to further unwravel what the mapping utility can't actually finish. As far as I know unless a UV map is reapplied (resetting everything again) the original remains as the modeler edits it. As I understand it the UV map in the UV map editor will need to be resized several times to make all of the seperated pieces fit into the squared area prior to outputing the map to a paint program for skinning/painting. Try unwrapping the UV using Lithunwrap if the UV map editor in Blender seems too hard. Some peeps swear by Lithunwrap; some just seem to swear at it...LOL. I'm slowly beginning to comprehend the concepts behind UV mapping techniques. Rememeber that UVW and XYZ are basically the same coordinates. 

[Clavin12]

OK I've got it to unwrap but i cant export the unwrapped image with the unwrapped object on it. You know so i have the outlines as guidelines.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

If all else fails try doing a print screen grab and paste it into your paint program, try painting that and then try appling that to your model. Blender, must have some method for exporting the UV to either a specific graphic format or to an external paint program. Try browsing the user preferences tab where default output setting are stored for Blender.

[Dianoga4]

You can use "Save UV Face Layout". I believe it saves the layout as a TGA file which you can open in whatever program and save as whatever format you want. Hope that helps.

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Nice model D4 I see Blender suits you well. Hopefully when you Blender modellers learn a bit more you all can post a few tutorials on how to use it for making BZII stuff. I've been able to import 3ds models from Truespace with no major problems, but creating models with it has never really gone any where for me.

I found a fairly easy method to UV map with TS and get a decent map for painting by applying a cubic map and sliding the bounding box to the edge of the model; it auto seperates the faces into nice paintable chunks. Maybe Blender has a similar map tool to auto sererate the faces too? BNG.