Digital Art Zone

I seem to have quite a lot of bad luck when it comes to unwraping models.
what are the best tips/tricks on how to best pin/seam/unfold a mesh?

is it easier to just use and external tool like UVmapper or is Carrara 8.1 fully capable and i just do not know what i’m doing.

My goal would be to get a nicely unfolded map where i can then point over that in Photoshop and then apply the map in Carrara.

What if i have a model with several shader domains,  if i unfold that and paint the individual sections,
when i load the texture in the shader room for the object, do i just load the same texture file into all the individual shader domains
and they will read in the data from the individual portion of the map they need?

HI Method321

It’s a difficult question to answer, since each model is different, there a different way to do it depending on the shape and how you want to define shading domains.

You can try unwrapping in UV mapper classic, it’s free, but you CAN unwrap in Carrara,.. although the process may be more laborious.


for the question about multiple shading domains,..

Ideally,.. each shading domain would have it’s own Texture map, and UV unwrapping.
Daz3D models like V4 / M4 etc, would be a good example of different texture maps, for different shading domains, on the same model.

While there’s nothing wrong with exporting a UV template to paint in Photoshop,..

You can “paint” on the model directly in Carrara,. which can save it as a PSD file if you want to paint the basics, then use Photoshop to add images and refine the texture map.

Hope it helps

I have found that Carrara’s UV editing has a steep learning curve, but it has been worth it to learn and use. I’m very much a novice, but as an example I have fixed UV mapping on purchased models where there was significant stretching (not noticeable depending on how the model was positioned, but very annoying for how I was using it). And of course if you are doing your own models you’ll want to create UV maps.

I highly recommend reading up on UV mapping to get an idea of what you are trying to do. Carrara can create a UV map based on box, sphere, etc., but if you spend the time you can use the seam tool to identify where it will be “cut”. Then use unfold to obtain the results. When I made RPG dice models (polyhedrons) this was very straightforward. Conceptually it works by putting the die on a surface that takes an imprint of the face touching it, then tip it over an edge so that a different face is touching and repeat until every face has touched the surface exactly once. What you then have is a “path”: the edges of this path are where the seams are.

One thing to note is don’t bother trying to clean up the unfolded uv map until you have gotten every shading domain to unfold satisfactorily. Once the unfolding is good then you can scale the different parts, but each time you unfold will re-unfold every domain.

To check for stretching and alignment use a grid texture map—it is easy to make one in photoshop, the gimp, etc. Apply that, set the repeat as desired and carefully inspect.

Note: I’ve not used any other tool to do UV mapping so I have no basis for comparing Carrara’s UV editing to others