xsi uv layout

[diginime]

Hi, i saw the tutorial on UV layout in XSI and at the part of unwrapping the Rhino head, is it ok to use a cubic projection on the head by selecting the whole cluster of the head? i thought it's quite same as using several planar projection on different angle. Thanks.

[brandeil]

Best to try and see what suits u best, many people pref dif ways, best to find yours by trying out dif ways.

[StephenC]

In my experience of UV mapping there is a few things that were not taught at the college I attended. I had to learn it the hard way.

1st off you have to look at your object and break it down to simple forms. This is very improtant as it will affect which mapping method you use. (Note to Pelt users* Pelt works great however there are some things it does not do and is not the best for low poly models)
Take a head for example. It closely resembles a cylinder and not a sphere. When you map it however you will get a seam. This is normal and the seam can be controled. The texture support can be moved and rotatated while watching the UV layout window. Now for a trick to really get those UVs lined up and working so you can paint without seeing the seam. First off when you have a cylinder object that your mapping you will need to map half of it first then map the other half. The reason for this is you will have more control over the way the texture support is positioned and it gives better results. Bear in mind that there is a direction and orientation in all projection mapping. Sometimes you will do one half then have to invert the second half to make them line up. Once you use cylinder projection on half your head you will notice that the texture support has two circles connected by a line. The line is where the seam is and should always face opposite of what your tring to unwarap. Then it will still look strange untill you move the texture support a bit away from the center of the model towards the direction opposite of the normals or faces your unwrapping. the generic mapping settings tried to center the projection over all selected faces which is not what you want. Now when you have both halves of the head mapped you can combine them useing heal and positioning them close. This is how I do head and it works perfectly. Now for one final note that helps with the seams. Most good artists will use a grid texture when Unwrapping any object so they can see how the UV's look. This is very helpfull and I do use one. the trick to get seamless textures is to line up the seam edges so they are on the same x axis meaning you can select one uv on one side and the matching one on the other side and apply a scaling so they line up on the horizontal axis in the UV editor window.
This will move some stuff around and depending on how you set up your projection it could start moving some UVs in a way that causes a bit of distortion. The next step is to us a relax with the option of keeping boarder UV's fixed in place. This is just one method that I hope that helps those tring to Unwrap their objects.

If anyone has any more questions as to my methods I will be happy to help. ;)