Okay guys,
I have asked quite a few questions on here, and I finally know the exact question to ask.
I’v been trying to create a UV lightmap set in Maya.
How do I know which faces to group into each UV ‘Island’ ?
I know that the faces that are touching each other and facing the same direction should be on the same island, but what about if there are faces, facing the same direction, that aren’t touching each other?
Such as the image below.
I have lots of faces on my polygon that are on the sides of extrusions, which face the same direction, but don’t touch each other. Should they have their own islands?
Also, these faces above are smaller than 1 lightmap unit in width (On a 64x64 grid). From my understanding, you are supposed to snap the UVs to the grid. How can I do that when some of my faces are less than half the width of a unit?
Also, look at the face that the top arrow is pointing to (in the center). It’s tilted. Would I have to rotate that in the UV editor so that I could snap the points to the grid? (And scale it in size so that it’s the full width of a single unit?
Definitely looking forward to people clearing up my confusion, thanks!
Hi!
If I see your mesh correctly… I would keep all connecting flat faces together (inner crosses maybe), the rest: cut at the edges. You can stretch lightmap uvs so you can make those small areas bigger in the uv layout!
Also… don’t use 64 res lightmap for this mesh but higher if you want a clean result!
Just to clarify, that would mean I would have 16 separate islands just for the outside of the 4 extruded faces in the center alone? (Each island container one of the faces). Then 4 more islands for each of the tops of the 4 extruded faces, and then all of the faces that are pushed in around those faces as a single island?
It seems like it would take a long time to create islands for each of the sides of the extruded faces, assuming I understand you correctly. Especially considering I have two more extruded faces above and below those center 4
For extra clarification, the 4 extruded faces I speak of I have marked in this picture.
As you can see, there are also two above and below the center for. And each one has 4 side faces. That would be 8 x 4 = 32 separate islands for just those side faces?
Yes this is how I meant (wherever you have a hard edge: cut). …this is my method that’s working for me…
…those small details… many times you can get away with normal/parallax occlusion map… a lot easier lightmap with less possible errors…
Okay, I will work on the UV and post the results
I think you will need at least 512 lightmap resolution (because of those small parts) for clean result so I would build my lightmap uvs on a 256 (or 512) grid…
And again: you can stretch the uvs! …what I would do is scale up those smaller sides to make them wider then select all polygons and snap to grid/pixel.
