Using Maya: Fixing UV errors.

  When doing the UVs on my door, I noticed my Bells had a weird section where the pattern distorted.

 I opened up the UV texture editor and took a look at the mesh.

To fix this, I need to sew as many parts of the Bell as I could so that the texture pattern could wrap around it efficiently. I had to think of the different parts of the bell, so I knew what I need to sew. The area in which the error occurs is the outside edges from the top and bottom of the bell, so I needed to sew all them together.

To do this, I selected the UV tab and highlighted parts of the edging to the bell by clicking the vertexes. This particular piece needed to be rotated.

In the UV editor tool bar I selected the rotation tool to turn this section around to match the rest of the edging mesh.

I then sewed the loose edges together.

 To make sure everything fits together nicely, I adjusted the size of the two ends of the bell using the scale tool.  I then placed them inside the rim of the bell. This makes it easier tidier.

Here you can see where I have sewn all the edges to the bell. However, some of the inside edges were not straight.

 To do this, I selected the edges which were uneven and used a special tool in the UV texture editor that straightened them out. This tool used 4 different alignments, one for the top, bottom, left and right edges to straighten out. The image below shows four red arrows and 4 sets of yellow dotted lines. These are the tools are used.

There! a better UV map with a cleaner mesh!

Using Maya: How To UV

To start my UV's,  I firstly had to change the material to 'Lambert' and assign a checkered pattern to the object I was about to UV. The reason for using a checkered pattern is so I can see if there are any problems. For example if the checker pattern distorts in anyway, I know there is a problem.

Once the material had been assigned, I then selected the 'Faces' tab.

I then double click the object so the whole surface was selected.

I then went to the 'Create UV' menu in the tool bar and selected 'Automatic Mapping'. The reason for this as this particular shape would be easier to UV within using this method as it unfolds the shape with both sides and edges.

Already I could see that the auto mapping had worked well as the checkered pattern spread across it evenly.

I then went into the 'Edit UVs' menu and clicked on the 'UV texture editor' tab. This would unfold the mesh of this particular object into faces and edges.

Here is what the shape looked like after automatic mapping. However, although it looks okay, there were places were the edges had been broken up, so to make it a more efficient mesh I had to sew them together.

The most efficient way I found, was to select the 'Edges' tab and select some sides to see where they would connect.

To find where certain parts of the mesh connected, I had to select random sides to see where certain edges connected. When selecting one side, it would turn orange and the corresponding side will also turn orange, this is how to find out which edges to sew.

 I used the shift key on my keyboard to select multiple edges that needed to be sewn.

I then right clicked and selected 'Polygons' and the 'Move and Sew UV Edges' tab.

This the attached the two edges together into one. I repeated this process until everything was sewn where it needed to be.

Here is what this object's mesh looks like after sewing the edges together. Doing this task makes a cleaner more organized mesh.

Perfect!

Using Maya: Making the 'Seals' using the Extrude tool.

Example of Japanese Origami Seal.

 

With many parts of my door, I have used the 'Extrude' tool to make more efficient meshes and also to get interesting shapes. For part of my door, I have Japanese Origami Seals that hang from the rope around the top half of the structure. To make this, I started off by making a basic cube.

I then adjusted the size and width of the cube until it was the right shape for the seal.

I then need to subdivide the object so I could extrude. I did this by using the 'Insert edge loop' tool.

I clicked the options box next to the tool and selected 'Multiple edge loops' and changed them to 2 divisions. This would make a total of 3 sections to the shape. Using multiple edge loops enables me to have accurate distance between the edges. Something I couldn't do so perfectly if I did it manually.

I then selected the 'Faces' tab and selected the area in which I wanted to extrude.

I then clicked the 'Extrude' tab and dragged it out sideways.

Once I made the size of the new extruded shape accurate. I then selected the bottom face of that extrusion and pull it down (to mirror the previous shape)

I then wanted to add another edge loop so I could repeat this process.

This was done by clicking the options again on the 'Insert Edge loop' tool but this time using 'Relative distance from edge' as this enabled me to make an edge where ever I wanted. If I used the previous setting, it would subdivide the shape too much.

Once I completed that part, I repeated the process until I had four rectangular shapes that were all part of one object.

This is what it looks like with good subdivisions and all faces extruded correctly.

 

Lastly, I rotated it with the rotation tool so it would look and hang like a real Japanese origami seal!

Using Maya: Fixing objects with 5 or more sides.

When I made certain shapes, I began making silly mistakes. I thought if you I wasn't going to texture underkneath the object,  why subdivide it so much? So I ended up deleting faces that wouldn't affect the shape of the object. However, I did know that anything other than three or four sided shapes was BAD. I think I didn't notice it as much on this shape as it stayed square. However, wherever a vertex doesn't meet an edge, It needs to be deleted OR have an edge connecting it

So, to fix this particular base shape, I used the 'Split Polygon tool' which makes an edge between the odd vertexes. It also will subdivide the shape accurately.

To make the edges with the split poly tool, I just click on the two vertexes I wanted to add the poly too. In this case the edges on the side of the square above need to wrap around the base.

Here is the first edge I made.

Now that was sorted, I noticed the corners of the square had an edge that also didn't connect all the way around. To do this, I selected the 'edge' tool and deleted the affected edge.

I then selected the 'vertex' tool and deleted the unnecessary vertexes. Although the edge is gone, the shape still remains until they're deleted, so it is crucial that when deleting any edge, that the accompanying vertexes go with it.

I repeated this step around all the corners until I ended up with no wrong shapes or unused edges/vertexes.

Much better!