UV Mapping a car in max (WIP)

I think I'll give an intro to the "unwrap uvw" tool go over how I would start a car and finish with some useful tricks that I have learned. If I'm missing anything please let me know. Cholbrow@gmail.com

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Im not sure what expirence you guys have so Ill start with the basics. Most of this page is changing the settings to be more useful.

I normaly start with something like a door or a hood. With this car the door is a seperate element so it makes it easy. I then and an unwrap modifier and click the big edit button. The edit UVW window should pop up. (this seems to have errors once and a wile, you may have to click it more then once)

Now your object may have no UV's. If this is the case you will see nothing in the edit window. You can either close the window and applie a "uvw map" modifier or get into sub object mode by clicking on the words unwrap uvw in the modifier stack. selecting all in the viewport. then go to mapping in the edit window and hit flatten mapping, the default settings should be fine. (if you have some wires in the edit window you will want to select all of them and hit flatten mapping.) This is normaly how I start my objects others may have better methods.

Note, handy hotkeys...
Q= move, Ctrl R= rotate, Ctrl B= Break, Ctrl W= wield verts, Ctrl T= taget wield
(there are no hotkeys for scale or stitch but you can make your own if you go into Customize>customize user interface. If you click on were it says "main UI" and change it to Unwrap UVW and you will have all the opperations. I normaly jsut make a stitch as something like Alt S)

You will probably want to go into the Edit window options>advanced options and turn off the grid and turn on constant update in viewports. In older versions of max you also would have to change the render size but this seems to be no longer an issue.

At the bottom of the window under the words "selection modes" are your vertex edge face modes. The + and - right beside them are grow and shrink selction. The select element check box can be super useful when your neer done and need to move stuff around.