UVW Quick Planar Mapping in Max 2012

[SammyJoeUK]

Y'ello!

I'm following a tutorial on a modular workflow and I need to find the Quick Planar Map option which is found in the Unwrap UVW Modifier...



These are the tools I'm after - the "Quick Planar Map" button gives the uniformly scaled section in the UVW Map that I'm after - like so...



Where is in 3ds Max 2012... which I'm using the options have been seemingly removed...



I've found some similar tools which kind of do what I'm after - but the problem is it doesn't give me the uniformly scaled section I'm after and instead the section I want scaled covers the ENTIRE texture sheet like so...



That red section covering the full texture is just for that skinny strip on the mesh - and I need for it to be in proportion so I can accurately scale and texture it.

Any ideas? Probably made this sound really confusing - if you need me to clarify further - lemme know.

Thanks in advance!

[Chase]

Max 2012 still has the Quick Planar Map ability, it's just a symbol instead of the lettered menu. It's the symbol with the lightening bolt


As far as unwrapping goes there are generally a few options you will tend to use the most. Quick Planar Mapping, Pelt, Unfold Mapping, Flatten Mapping, Point to Point Seam, Stitching, Break, and Welding. The Align Options are useful and you could use them instead of the other options listed above. It's generally a case by case, and a trial kind of thing. Since I don't have a lot of experience with unwrapping I would say use every option just to know you can unwrap a model using any method. Obviously some will be quicker then others, but it's the practice that counts

Have you messed around with changing Map Channels? Those are awesome! A quick tip I got out of the 3dmotive video about unwrapping is setting up the UWV Modifier to always load the "Open UV Editor" option so I'm not having to do it manually every single time. Also, create hotkeys cause it'll make your life easier. If you're not sure how or which ones I can show you

[SammyJoeUK]

Originally Posted by Chase

Max 2012 still has the Quick Planar Map ability, it's just a symbol instead of the lettered menu. It's the symbol with the lightening bolt


As far as unwrapping goes there are generally a few options you will tend to use the most. Quick Planar Mapping, Pelt, Unfold Mapping, Flatten Mapping, Point to Point Seam, Stitching, Break, and Welding. The Align Options are useful and you could use them instead of the other options listed above. It's generally a case by case, and a trial kind of thing. Since I don't have a lot of experience with unwrapping I would say use every option just to know you can unwrap a model using any method. Obviously some will be quicker then others, but it's the practice that counts

Have you messed around with changing Map Channels? Those are awesome! A quick tip I got out of the 3dmotive video about unwrapping is setting up the UWV Modifier to always load the "Open UV Editor" option so I'm not having to do it manually every single time. Also, create hotkeys cause it'll make your life easier. If you're not sure how or which ones I can show you

Chase you genius - thanks for pointing out where the Quick Planar tool is! :3

Also - I didn't quite understand the whole mapping channels thing... Is it possible you could elaborate on them - I'm sure they're useful - but I can't see how D:

[Chase]

Another thing I forgot to mention was the Preserve UV option under Editable Poly will come in handy so you can edit your verts, edges, and faces without messing up your already finished unwrap. Certainly, so have multiple Map Channels is useful for many things. Pretty much the UVs of what you unwrapped will always been in Map Channel 1. Anything that will require its' own set of UVs will need to be placed in Map Channel 2, 3, 4, etc. The primary examples I can think of what be these:

1) Light Maps. I can give a rundown of Light Maps if you're interested but for now I'll just glance over that. Usually when you unwrap your mesh you are going to want to save UV space which means you're going to overlap any repetitive pieces that could potentially be textured the same. Sharing UV space increases the quality of the texture because the UV shells will be larger. UV shells is just a name given to each piece of your model that is unwrapped as its own section.

Light Maps don't like having any overlapping pieces in the unwrap so you'll have to make sure everything gets its own part of the UV space.....the UV space is just the small box in the UV editor. If you set up the amount of times your texture tiles in the Preferences you'll see that there are other UV boxes that are around the one that is shown. I applied a checkerboard texture and outlines the initial box so you could see what I meant. Each square is referred to as the 0-1 UV space.


Since Light Maps need their own unique UV space you're not going to want to delete all that unwrapping work you just did. Never fear! What you'll need to do instead is simply collapse the modifier stack that includes your initial unwrap to preserve your work. Then apply another UVW Modifier, either Reset your UVWs now to unwrap from scratch which I wouldn't recommend or under the Channel section change map channel 1 to map channel 2. Then move your UVs around according to how you need them, collapse the stack and call it good. If you want to go back to the UVs you'd set for map channel 1, select map channel 1 under the Channel menu, hit the Reset UVWs button and your very first unwrap comes back. Any time you make changes to a UV set you need to collapse the modifier stack so that the changes stick.

2) The same process applies for applying different textures and masks. Let's say you use a Composite Material in the Material Editor. This is great when you want to have multiple materials on one model. You can locate the Composite Material by opening up the Material Editor with 'M', select the Standard Material, select Composite Material, and load the necessary textures. Let's say you model a barrel. You have the metal texture, and maybe want to apply a rust texture and a mask for where that rust will show on the barrel......by the way this isn't the best example because you'd probably want to just unwrap this barrel and texture it all in one go instead of all this work....Anyways, you've loaded the metal, rust, and mask textures. The metal will go in map channel 1, rust in map channel 2, and rust in map channel 3. To make sure these textures go into their respective map channels you'll need to make sure they load in them correctly. Immediately following the textures being loaded, select each one individually and change their map channel in the Material Editor. Now you can freely adjust the UVs based on where you want them in their texture.

This wall of text was probably more confusing then anything so if you want me to post a mini tutorial later on I can certainly do that. It'll help me as well haha.

[swag]

You have to uncheck 'normalize map' (end of the UVW modifier) before you use quick planar map. Then it will be mapped with the proper proportions (although it will be large).

Normalizing contrains the UVs to the square, sometimes it's useful though.

[Isunoj]

After mapping, you can try select all faces and use "relax" tool under tools menu in Unwrap UVW modifier. Use relax by face angles press aplly. If ok press ok button. Now you can adjust UV island manually.

[SammyJoeUK]

@Chase - from my understanding of that - you could potentially have different Maps on different UV channels depending on how you want them.

So say I wanted a Normal map rendered I could have the models and UV's exploded to avoid disturbances with each other while if I wanted to render out an AO map for texturing the diffuse - i could have the AO on a separate UV channel from the Normal map where unlike the exploded one - it's all together for easier texturing when bringing it into Photoshop?

...think that makes sense...

Also... wouldn't that mean stacking Multiple "Unwrap UVW" modifiers in the Modifiers List of an object - one for each UVW Unwrap channel you use?

[Chase]

There are some instances where you'd want your AO to have it's own map channel, but for the most part it can just share the same map channel as your original unwrap for your normal map. It's all in the way you bake, much you like you referenced the explode baking method. The reason you would explode your mesh is so you don't get unwanted shading. The UVs wouldn't matter for this. Don't stack multiple UV unwrap modifiers on top of each other. You can freely collapse the modifier into an Editable Poly and switch between map channels. If you don't collapse the stack when you've made changes to a map channel's UVs, it won't save the changes.

[maxthebest685]

I use that planner function then i click on Quick Peel. It works pretty well for me..