Hey guys,
I’m having trouble with unwrapping a complex model (sofa), this is the result I get by unwrapping the model in 3ds max
the shading is incorrect, the textures for the leather material look very poor and you can see the polygons and edges on the surface instead of the organic form of the sofa.
Is 3ds max the best software for unwrapping UVW maps? If so, what is the best way to do it or some other software is better for this problem.
Every advice is welcome and thanks in advance!
Sorry I can’t look at the mesh, I don’t have max. But are you using an automatic unwrapping tool or are you marking seams yourself? If the former, I would suggest the latter because automatic unwrapping tools often can make screwy lightmaps.
Here is a link where you can download the model, if anybody wants to take a sneak peek of the complex sofa 
An unfortunate reality of modelling is the need to uv map objects. It’s a lpong tedious process but in the end it’s a required step and is best done by manually creating them. As the other gnetleman said, any form of automatic unwrapping will need at the least some manual assistance. In my experience, 3ds max is one of the very best tools bit it comes to personal preference in the end. There are alot of tutorials on using 3ds max for texture in mapping and all of its tools. One of my personal go to YouTubers is arimus3d. His techniques for modelling, uvmapping, normal map generation, etc. Is slpt on and very good.
UVs can be a pain but don’t have to be.
Tools like UVLayout transfer the process of cutting your mesh from 2D to 3D.
After defining the cuts and UV shells you can unflatten them in a 2D viewport with just
a few keystrokes.
It’s also possible to group similar UV shells, stack them on top of one another etc. etc.
It takes a little to learn all the hotkeys (the application mostly works without an interface)
but it’ll speed up your workflow in the long run and you’ll have way better UVs.
Just have a look: Introduction to Headus UV Layout - 3dmotive - YouTube
I’ve tried both ways but in one point 3ds max crashes while unwrapping and also i can’t clean up the mesh from with triangle segments to quad segments. The function “quadrify all” doesn’t seem to have any affect. Any ways, I’ve replaced the mesh ( imported new sofa) and there is no problem at all.
This looks very easy and fast to learn but when I import a mesh it’s difficult to make any action, the program responds very slowly. Do you have any solution for this?
Ah okay, I didn’t have any problems with the application to date even with high-poly stuff.
What’s the polycount of your model and your hardware?
I did the polygon count for the mesh and the result is 224792 polygons and the info for my hardware: GTX970M 3GB, 16GB ram and i75700HQ.
See this:
May I also mention that, besides the UVs, it seems like your smoothing groups are not set up correctly.
Have a look at the documentation Autodesk provides for THIS
Cheers!
You polycount seems waaaay to high for a model of the given complexity.
Could you show a wireframe?
You made me curious
Even better, here’s a link to download the mesh. Maybe I calculated wrong, if it’s not a problem you can make a double check.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7yj3cYGvbr5SE96dHdBQ1F5MWs
I could be more of help if you uploaded an FBX or OBJ as I don’t have MAX at the moment
one OBJ coming right up
