Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
UV Mapping
UV mapping characters can be a daunting task. When UV mapping the level,
we were generally working with fairly simple shapes that lent themselves
easily to planar maps and cylindrical maps. The human form really is much
more complex than that at first blush.
Fortunately, there have been some important tools that have emerged in the last
few years that can assist in efficient and quickly created UV maps. Maya actually
has some of my favorite UV editing tools; however applications like Modo have
emerged with some really powerful UV tools that are much more efficient than
Maya's. To make matters even more complicated, there are free tools like RoadKill
(
http://www.pullin-shapes.co.uk/page8.htm
) that integrate fairly seamlessly with
Maya that allow for some extraordinarily fast UV mapping using all the latest
pelt/LCSM mapping technologies. If you do a lot of UV mapping, or plan to,
learning one of these two tools may be in your best interest.
With all that said, Maya's UV mapping tools have done some catching up in
recent versions, and many of the tools and techniques available in Modo and
Roadkill are available in Maya as well. There are enough available that we will
stick to Maya's tool set for this chapter's tutorials. Many of the techniques
used for UV mapping the human form are similar to those used for mapping
the level, so building upon the toolset you are already familiar with will move
us along quickest.
Tutorial 9.1: Character UV Mapping
In this tutorial we will be doing several things. First, Maya's UV tools are
powerful, but sometimes require some very specifically created polygonal
structure. Before we even start building UV maps, we will take a moment to
make sure that the geometry built in the last chapter does indeed fit into
these Maya-imposed requirements. The requirements actually are good to
keep our eye out for (they are mostly concerned with the problems that arise
from nonfour-sided polygons) since identifying and fixing them at this state
will ultimately save time within Unity.
Mesh Inspection and Cleanup
Step 1:
Open Maya and set the project to Incursion-Maya.
Step 2:
Open AegisChung.mb.
Step 3:
Turn on Backface Culling. In the persp view panel, choose
Shading>Backface Culling (
Figure 9.1
).
Why?
Figure 9.1
shows the results of the last chapter with backface culling
activated. It appears that the entire body has the normals facing the
wrong way. If you are using the version of Aegis Chung that is included
