UV mapping with trueSpace and UVMapper Pro

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A. First, you might want to clear the checker texture so you can see the UVs easier. Then, move the UVs around so that you'll have enough room around the face and the bottom part, and move the bottom part under the face part. Now zoom into this area. You could also switch to one window view to be able to see more of the work area. (In the bottom right corner there is a little window of different view configurations. Click on the icon in the first column, first row. Switch between the object view and the map view by hitting the TAB key.)

Get into vertex selection mode, and select the vertex in the bottom left corner of the face. One of the vertices of the bottom part will light up in green; this is the vertex that is connected to the face's selected vertex on the mesh. We can see that there are two faces to the left of this "green" vertex. Since the face part has 4 rows of faces, that means the bottom part's faces which line up with the face part's faces would be, from left, faces number 3, 4, 5, and six. 

B. Go into face selection mode and select those faces. 

C. Move those faces away from the other faces of the bottom part. 

D. Now select those other faces, and move them away, too (e.g. to the side of the face).

E. Select the faces we cut out earlier and move them back under the face part. Line these faces up with the face part and scale them until the top edges of the bottom part and the bottom edges of the face part are the same size. Use the + key on the keypad to scale proportionally.

F. Now go into vertex selection mode again, and draw a rectangle around the top vertices of the bottom part and the bottom vertices of the face part. Go to Tools / UV's / Stitch, and say Yes. Now these UVs are stitched together. (In UVMC you can move and scale the faces and vertices, but you can't stitch the UVs.)

G. Select the first two faces of the bottom part, move them to the left of their neighboring faces, scale them until they match the size of the other faces, then select their neighboring vertices and stitch them together. Now select the rest of the bottom part faces, move them to the right of the bottom part faces, scale them, select the neighboring vertices, and stitch them together. You can also select the faces on the left and scale them horizontally and do the same with the faces on the right to make these bottom faces more even. 

                                                            Figure 15

If the textures' resolution will be the same for all parts, then it's a good idea to try to scale the UVs so that the checker texture would be about the same size on every part. (Select a part's UVs, then, to make the checker pattern smaller, scale the  bigger, and vice versa.) If you select by vertices, not faces, you will be able to see the whole group, not just one object, in the object view UVs window. This way it will be easier to see how big the squares are on all the parts as you scale the UVs. Again, use the + key to scale proportionally. 

If you won't need the same texture resolution for all the parts, then you could make UVs of those parts which will have lower resolution smaller in the UV map. For example, if there are parts that won't  really show in the final picture or will be small, the UVs could be smaller on the map, thus making room for bigger UVs, and so higher resolution textures, for the more important parts.

Try to position the UVs so that you can use as much of the space as possible. Figure 16 shows the mapped figure and the layout of the map after scaling and positioning the UVs. 

9. Save the UV map, too, so you can open it in your paint program and paint your texture over it there. To save the UV map, go to File / Save Template. You can make the size of the template bigger than the default 1024 x 1024 pixels, if you wish. 

                                           Figure 16

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Copyright ©  2002-2012 by Susan Lee.