Asset Creation: Maya Character UV Mapping and Texturing - Creating Games with Unity and Maya - page 249

Step 32: Size shells to find constant checkerboard across all mapped
surfaces ( Figure 9.24 ).

Warnings and Pitfalls
A warning about the
previous Tips and Tricks
though. Once history is
deleted, those projection
nodes that allow the
manipulation handles
for a projection to return
are now gone. Since
the UVs are present and
roughly laid out in the
UV Texture Editor, this
isn't that huge a deal
since most UV editing
will be done there and
not with the manipulator
handles at this point. But
be aware that deleting
history limits the nodes
that allow for the handles
to return.

Figure 9.24 Resized shells to create consistently sized checkers.

Why?
The checkerboard texture does more than just indicate distortion due
to faulty UV map. They help indicate how much of the texture space any
one section is getting. Objects that are smaller in world space generally
should have less texture space. In world space (in the view panel), if the
checkers have the same size across surfaces, Maya is indicating that they
are taking up an appropriate amount of texture space for the physical size
of the polygons.

Chest
The chest is (roughly speaking) another cylinder. This means that the
chest could be mapped with one big cylindrical map. However on closer
inspection, the chest is really more like a flattened cylinder, which means
that a cylindrical map will result in some strange distortion if done by itself.

Often, a better approach to the chest are two cylindrical maps, one from each
direction with some careful adjustment to the scale and placement of the
manipulator.

Step 33: Make a selection of the front of the chest ( Figure 9.25 ).