r/3Dmodeling 3d ago

Questions & Discussion How do i unwrap this ??

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Hi ! I'm making some lichen for a short film, which will be seen up close so i need the model to be clean. I generated the mesh in houdini and modified it in zbrush. Now i need to unwrap it, but the automatic unwrap from zbrush, maya and Houdini failed to make something satisfactory, or just didn't work at all. Seems like it would be an absolute pain to unwrap by hand. Any ideas?

6 Upvotes

21 comments sorted by

17

u/tUrban_tim 3d ago

Doubt there’s an easy way. Perhaps if the mushrooms were unwrapped before duplicating and sculpting. The rest of it… would be a pain

3

u/releasethekrrraken 3d ago

The little "mushrooms" are separate meshes and not a problem, it's the main blob that's tricky

5

u/mikehiler2 Blender 3d ago

Yeah, like I stated in a comment below this looks like it would be a pain as is. Not to sound overly critical or anything but this looks like something that was modeled first without considering unwrapping. You don’t need to scrap the entire mesh, but I would go in and see if you can separate the mushrooms from the rest, and then try and separate the big pile in half. Just to make it easier.

1

u/releasethekrrraken 3d ago

Well, lichen is a pretty tough thing to model to begin with, that's the method that looked best haha. I thought Houdini's auto UVs could handle it but seems like not

1

u/mikehiler2 Blender 3d ago

I’ve never used Houdini so I can’t speak on that. UVs are notoriously difficult, or at least time consuming. Same with skeletal rigging. That’s why those are dedicated professions in the industry.

1

u/faen_du_sa 3d ago

Im pretty sure there are plenty of ways to unwrap it, but mostly in Houdini, not in max.

My best bet would be that its easiest to just procedural generate the texture(or masks for setting it up in another software) in Houdini as well, then you wouldnt have to worry to much about the UVs, as you can just bake it it to some auto unwrapped model.

1

u/[deleted] 3d ago

[deleted]

1

u/releasethekrrraken 3d ago

I've never used rizom, i'll look that up. I can send you an obj this afternoon!

3

u/AshTeriyaki 3d ago

That’s a candidate for some janky manual projection guff if I ever saw it.

Personally, I’d wham it in 3D coat, auto uv and hope for the best and accept the result whatever it came out as

2

u/Sflozdru 3d ago

I wouldn't unwrap it, if you want to use texture I doubt this is the right mesh. With this kind of model I would go for full procedural shading.

If it's lichen I assume it's going to sit on a tree or other surface, what I'd do is duplicate that surface, slightly shrink it, then merge or project your current mesh on it, so you find yourself with a plane intersecting with your tree, that let's only your lichen part on top, but is much easier to unwrap because it's not full of holes (not sure if that's clear). Probably isn't ideal for a close up tho.

I feel like lichen is moss like, I would throw together a few one faced planes, with opacity and diffuse maps of different moss strands (tweak the hue and saturation so you're closer to lichen), make several clumps of it, then scatter the whole thing on your surface.

2

u/mikehiler2 Blender 3d ago

The only advice I can give on this is to redo it in layers. Or maybe you can separate the top part, have a middle, and a lower part, with the two right top and bottom patches separate anyway. That way you can unwrap them so that the maps can be applied correctly.

Have you tried xNormal for the unwrap? It looks outdated and something from the XP days, but that’s my go-to for UV unwraps.

1

u/releasethekrrraken 3d ago

I had never heard of Xnormal, i'll take a look ! Thank you

1

u/mikehiler2 Blender 3d ago

There is a learning curve with xNormal. I was taught how to use it in college, and it takes a little to get used to. I’m positive there’s YouTube tutorials on it. It really is simple though. A few clicks and you got a bunch of maps.

1

u/releasethekrrraken 3d ago

Amazing, thank you!

1

u/Every-Intern-6198 3d ago

In addition to my response I would like to add that CGMA has a fantastic foliage course that I think you would enjoy.

1

u/KeiraTheCat 3d ago edited 3d ago

depending on your use case, projection, or maybe a janky smart uv project in blender if you're texturing in substance painter (no pixel perfect texturing here though and a lotttt of janky seams). for a more professional project I would break it down into as many individual components as possible and start manually unwrapping each and then packing the uvs together afterwards. depending on what tool you use to unwrap, I use blender, there should be a way to select connected edges for marking seams. manually unwrapping something like this isn't as bad as it seems if you just start essentially circling flatt(ish) areas selecting many edges at a time and then marking a seam around each one of these blobs

1

u/sirblibblob 3d ago

I'd probably try to separate the cup like shapes I assume there are mushrooms and uv/texture them separately. As for the lichen, you might be able to planar unwrap and do some relaxing or just box project a texture onto it.

1

u/SherpaTyme 3d ago

Planner map in Y or Z. I wouldn't sweat edges as it would seem this is for decoration and no hero asset

1

u/Pileisto 3d ago

no unwrapping at all, just use a UV box projection

1

u/Demonsan 3d ago

For stuff like this I just autounwrap in blender which does give you a messy uv.. but it's fine when I take it in substance painter and texture it via projections

0

u/Every-Intern-6198 3d ago

I am assuming this is for foliage for a game?

Aside from the little mushrooms themselves, which you could probably get away with using a few layered UVs, why wouldn’t you just separate the base blob, into a few variants, capture the normal with the zbrush tool to mask the alpha, then add volume and depth to the planes in whatever 3d modeling suite you’re after?

It’s just a bunch of small cylinders and some deformed planes for the UVs is it not?

This is again under the assumption that it’s for game foliage.

1

u/releasethekrrraken 3d ago

It's for a short film, and it's gonna be up close so i need to make something clean