Laying out nice UV's?

[Blenderhead]

What are everyone's thoughts on this? How did you learn how to best lay out nice usable UV's? I see some really nicely layed out flats there days, and I just wonder how much time was spent on them, what tips and tricks you guys have, and if you have any UV's in your inspiration folders :lucky:

[Vincent]

I'm always using ROADKILL when i'm working on characters/creatures/etc... It's way faster than 3DS Max (something like 30 minutes to get a great uv layout, it's simply magic).
For "hard surface" stuffs, i still use 3DS max, with the pelt and "relax" tool!

[Blenderhead]

Really? Doesn't that mess with the UV's for the hard-surface model if the edges are straight on the model? Doesn't pelt and relax cause a 'splay' effect?

[Vincent]

Really? Doesn't that mess with the UV's for the hard-surface model if the edges are straight on the model? Doesn't pelt and relax cause a 'splay' effect?

hmmm... I don't really understand what you mean, but i try to answer ahah
When I have some hard-surface model to unwrap. I first cut my seams, then i pelt each part, and to get it clean (because the pelt tool causes this "splay" effect you were talking about) I simply go into my uv editing window, and the in "tools" menu, I choose the relax one, and choose to relax by face angles, and it works perfectly for me!

[Blenderhead]

Have you ever used Blender's unwrap tools? It sounds like Roadkill works pretty much the same way as them. For organic meshes, it is perfect! But for me it doesn't work very well on boxy inorganic objects because the it doesn't unwrap the faces and retain the straight shapes...unless there is some setting I am missing.:paper:

[seven]

If it sounds like blender it's because some of the code was swiped from Blender its self.

source (http://www.pullin-shapes.co.uk/page8.htm)

Acknowledgements

LSCM and ABF code taken from Blender 2.41 and 2.42
www.blender.org

http://www.blender.org/cms/UV_Unwrapping.363.0.html

http://download.blender.org/demo/movies/seamcut_blender242.mov

http://www.blender.org/cms/UV_Unwrapping.753.0.html

[Blenderhead]

Hahaha wow! :D

Anyone know of a good pic of the back of a bullet? (Like with the silver firing cap and maybe some text too).

I lost my original unwrap of the model I am working on now...something weird happened in Max :doh: Unwrapped it again, but its just not the same :D