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
Normally I use a texture in the form of a checker pattern to keep my textures from being stretched or skewed In this case I made this (pic)
You can see how the squares on the window frame are a little bit weird. So just go in and move the points around until they look like they are squares (this might seem like a tall order but for the most part thats all there is to it).
In the tools menu (edit window) there is a button called "Break" and one called "stitch selected" These are probably the most useful things in the max editor. If you are in edge mode and you select a bunch of edges and hit break it will basicly detatch those faces. For example I have used it to cut my door in half. The edges that are red are selected, the ones that are blue corispond to the selected faces.(this is assuming that you havn't changed max's colours) I can use the stitch tool to moved and sew them together. The bias jsut adjusts which object it favors. I find that normaly with cars I'll flatten some geomatry and just stitch the parts togather. (as well as break parts apart where I think that edges should go.
This is what I ended up with. It was a little confusing to look at so i just selected some edges to make sence of what goes with what. then Hit the stitch tool. i left the front of the window detached. In this case I think that an extra seem is better then the stretching and work that i would get if i attatched it. (in the end I will probably do the extra work and attatch it)
NOTE! you should know that every seam that you have addes extra information to the vertexes. Meaning that it will slow your draw speed in realtime. Just like hard edges and crazy meshes. I have heard that if you combine uv seams and hard edges it uses less info. (this is jsut a rumor though, the less the better.) Making a model for real time is a juggle of looks and performance.
In the case of this door everything worked well. You may find that flatten gives you more problems and you end up pulling a lot of points. It all depends on the shape of the object and your luck.
