How long do you spend, on average, UV mapping a model?

it varies and depends on what model you unwrap
you need to mark seams properly more than you need to learn how to arrange UV's

>>525371
Depends entirely on the complexity of the model, its purpose, texture resolution, special material functions, etc.

A tiny prop will get auto-UVs with island margins corresponding to its texture resolution, that's less than 5 minutes of work. A 30k-tris character with multiple materials will get handplaced shells, multiple uv layers (base, lightmap, possibly others), etc, that can take anywhere from 1 day to a week.

>>525382
>>525371
if you wanted to know about your picture: those UVs have definitely been arranged manually, unwrapping it would have taken me at least a day.

>>525371
Depends on the complexity, what your Op depicts would take several hours to unwrap that well. I'd do it in one work day and a half for that I wager, moving at a comfortable pace.

Gun to my head 'gonna kill my family and rape my dog if I fail' pace would be done this side of 4hours with a fifty-fifty chance of survival.

>>525383
he unwrapped a highpoly model and made 4 uv maps
is that even a thing

>>525386
Yeah, it's just a model with 4 materials. Pretty much the same thing as unwrapping 4 models, they just all make the same thing.

>>525371
is that from flcl?

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>>525371
Depending on how complex the model is, 45 mins for simple organic stuff, to 1.5 hrs or 2hrs max for complex hard surface stuff for baking..

I just unwrap, then have the program pack automatically, keeping everything with a 1:1 ratio, and many 3D programs now have made UV mapping a lot less time consuming.

I don't do UDIMS or multiple maps for 1 object.

If you have the $$$, checkout headus UV layout. Dedicated UV app with an awful interface, but like I said, many 3d programs UV tools have gotten a lot better.

>>525404
I'm using Maya at the moment and the UV editor feels pretty horrible after coming off of 3DS, was honestly considering buying a dedicated UV editor after using it.

>>525404
>>525519
Fuck, really?
I was gonna download Maya 2016 and people said that the UV editor improved a lot.

Kill me

>>525532
Mayas UV editor did improve a lot, but its never enough, everybody hates Unwrapping.
Download Modo and give it a try. I have tested it only a little but it seems pretty powerful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfxczV2WFlk

>>525519
Try the nightshade uv plugin, it's free

A model like that would be at least a 7,5h work day for me.

>>525532
UV editor in 2016 is actually much better, the real truth is that people just hate doing UV layout :O

>>525397
ah I see it now

>>525532
It could've improved; I don't have any point of reference for what it used to be like, all I know is that to use it I have to endure a lot of fucking around to accomplish stuff I remember being relatively simple in Max, especially when you compare something like Pelt Mapping to the often barely functional Relax tool.

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>>525397
>>525613

I thought it was too, but I don't think so.

I think someone just appropriated a lot of the style and design into his own work.

Canti has a bit of a different styled head and body proportions.

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>>525630
For reference.

They're both pretty cool designs though.

All it'd take to really change the feel of the 3d image is one of those weird logos from flcl on the face.

>>525630
>>525632
nice concept

>>525571
People don't hate doing UV's. They find it therapeutic.
Only scrubs hate doing UV's cause they suck at it.

>>525632
Interesting concept. I like it.

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>>525635
>>525655

I don't know if concept is the right word.
The robot in the second post ( >>525632 ) is from an anime called FLCL, or Fooly Cooly, whichever way you want to say it.

It's not bad, I'd give it a watch. It had a 6 or so episode run back in the day, and it's getting renewed by Adult Swim. So it's a pretty big deal.

>>525639
Show me this mysterious "people", because i know at least 7 persons (which are clearly people) who are all in-between furious hate and mild aversion.
The only guy i ever met who liked UV-ing was an autist.
What is therapeutic in doing an necessary but boring and repetitive activity? I don't get it.

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>>525632
Nice idea.

>>525532

I have maya Lt 2016 and I must say I like its uv editor.
But that's just me

I could autism and rearrange the UV all day to get a bit more used texture space, but at some point I just say fuck it. I rather have non-perfect UV maps but be fast and efficient moving on to other stuff like texturing, than being stuck UV mapping on the same model for days. It's nice to have super efficient UV map layout and all fancy nifty stuff like separate UV layouts for lightmap, but it's better to have produced something of value in a small manageable timeframe and move on, atleast for me.

>>525755
If you want to optimize for max texture space usage why not use a pack algorithm?

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>>525371
This fat bastard took me a day in Max. I hated unwrapping and refused to do it until I discovered Quixel a year ago. Reasonably, it should have only taken me about 6 hours, but I'm still trying to get the hang of it.

>>525822
Man there's something I hate about this project. I feel like the textures don't really match the style of the character. Like they should be more stylized/cartoony.

>>525822
GJ Anon. That gave me a good chuckle and I laughed harder when I noticed the fedora.

>>525823
I think it is just fine.

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>>525371

First time I've UV mapped anything remotely complex, this took me 14 hours in Cinema 4D.

That said, I took the time to UV map every tiny detail, and didn't want to use relax because it always ends up in an odd angle. But I will do that from now on when seeing how many UV islands I ended up with by not using relax.

>>525822
The ultimate white knight. Love it.

Any of you guys have a detailed breakdown (video or series of images) on how some people make some neatly laid out and not to warped UVs?

>>525869

Good seams, frontal projection and relax gets you a long way

>>525822

I really like that character, anon.

>>525667
by far the most professional 3d people.
Beginners hate it since they suck and don't have a workflow that works.

>>525877
Would it be too much to ask for some videos showing these processes?

>>525943
It kinda is fun, unless you have other deadlines on your plate

>>525953

You need to specify a program.

>>525371

I never spend any time on UV mapping since I never seem to actually finish with the modeling stage.

The model is just never perfect enough.

I keep thinking: 'today I'll post this model on /3/.'

But then I see /3/ picking up on this imperfection or that imperfection. I see /3/ tearing my model apart.

And then it's back to modeling. Shaving off those little imperfections one by one. Forever trying to achieve that perfect model that will live up to /3/'s standards.

>>526523
It can be any program, though I would prefer blender or zbrush examples. It doesn't really matter though, because unless you're using a really high end, UV specializing software, you can still figure out how to do unwrapping in Blender from watching it be done in Maya and so on.

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Getting back into things, so I created a simple barrel as a refresher. This doesn't seem right, though.

>2016
>uv mapping
makes sense why your're on /3/

>>525822
How did quixel help with unwrapping. It looks powerful but I dont really see how it would help mapping something out.

>>526592

That's default cylindrical mapping in max. Great isn't it.

>>525519
>>525532
Just get Nightshade, jesus fuck

>>526596

Yeah, fuck textures.

>>526596>
>>526708
Even if you use substance painter or something, you still need to uv map your mesh because of ao/normal/curvature maps and stuff...

>>526713

Guy who said "fuck textures" here. For my part, I was being sarcastic. Of course you also need to specify where seams are supposed to be to best hide them, which isn't really automated outside of Zbrush as far as I know.

>>526523
maya

>>525826
The katana was a nice touche too.

>>525822
>>525823
The pinky on the right hand is great. Don't think I didn't notice this.

These are characters I actually want to encounter in games.

>>525386
UDIM

Myself and the people I work with, Take a First person gun. Maybe 20 minutes max unwrapping and packing.

>>525630
could be from Saga

>>531823
It's not.

There's a blog post of this.
It's his "original" design.

It's not technically from anything, but the influences are clear as day.

Why the fuck is this thread back from the dead? It had to be on page 10 by now.

>>525823
Heh, I'm the guy who made it and I pretty much agree. I think that's the downside to Quixel for beginners. While I have seen some people push out really awesome cartoony textures, it's streamlined first and foremost for realism. Blizzard styled texture painting probably would have been a better choice for this.

>>526611
It didn't really other than it provided a way to texture that made sense to me. PBR texturing is the bee's knees.

>>531827
Well it's either this, or have a bitch fest about Daz.

>>532639
Why not both?

>>532637
you can take these textures back in photoshop after you export them from quixel and you can stylize them, I'm new in 3d, (but I'm a long ass graphic designer/video editor) and I know only quixel so far as texturing softwares go because it was extremly easy for me to understand, does any other texturing softwares have options to stylize textures?

oh and I like your character, every detail is awesome, katana with that stance and armor )) and many other details. looking forward being good as you ))

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It really depends on what you are doing and how you texture- this set of bathroom props took me about 4 hours with Headus to mark and unwrap, I autolayout with 1:1 for consistent texel size.

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>>532730
The maps applied.

>>532725
Well there's Substance as well, but it's got a similar workflow as Quixel. I'm sure there's a video out there of someone explaining how to do more stylized textures, but both programs are definitely not setup to just go straight in and start painting. At least not without a beastly setup.

Also thanks, I'm not that good, but I feel the secret is to just have interesting ideas.

>>532730

>I autolayout with 1:1 for consistent texel size.

What does this mean.

>>532893
He uses the autolayout function of Headus set to 1:1 ratio so everything is on the same scale and same resolution (having something high res and low res on the same object looks weird as fuck).

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Kind of new to 3D, so on average about a day on simple projects.

I have a pretty big problem with unwrapping this project, namely that I can't seem to be able to apply the Unwrap UVW modifier to this trigger guard object.

What I did is just ctrl+a all objects and apply the modifier, but for some reason I can't select this one.

I'd appreciate any and all advice.

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>>532899

First off, don't use the default checker that comes with max. Realistically, it doesn't provide enough information on your uv scale and more importantly, facing direction. Try using the one I've attached. Also make sure you've scaled the texture down enough so that you can actually tell how even your unwrapping is.

B.) Before unwrapping, it's always a good idea to clear the history of a model by apply a reset XForms modifier found in the utilities panel. For whatever reason, max will hold on to the creation history of a model and when you don't erase it, it'll lead to a bunch of silly problems, such as crashing. Collapse the stack and resume unwrapping.

iii.) Try pelt mapping the trigger guard if you haven't already. It'll automatically bring the UV section to the center of the grid. If that doesn't work, click the top left button in arrange elements to bring all your uv pieces into the 1,0 space.

>>532997
Thank you, anon!
I'll definitely do all of these.

>>532898
This is correct. I didn't mention it before, but a couple of exceptions are when you have text on an object, you want to scale the UV's up in that case so the text is sharp and readable. Another time you might want to do this is for fine details with transparency; for example the curtains in this image to capture the tiny details in the lace.

Nowadays, when you dont use photoshop for texturing, UVmapping is all about good texel density and tangent representation, so your normalmaps dont look like shit. I dont know if i spend more than 2h unwrapping something overly complicated in last 2 years, usually it goes like this:
-LP smooth group set up so it looks correct
-unwrap shells from smoothing groups (so we get cuts on hard edges)
-eventually stitch some shit
-set up the texel density (ppm) depending on asset part.
- INTO THE UVLAYOUT IT GOES
-new box, new box, new box, pack best, send back to max
- textools SMOOTHGROUPS FROM UV SHELLS
- proceed to bake in max / xnormal / substance painter
- texturing process.