Modeling A Toy Dragonfly Part three

This tutorial series covers how to model, texture, and render a toy dragonfly. This part of the tutorial series will cover putting the model together, UV mapping, .

Set-up

Read this tutorial.Link
Read this tutorial.Link

Introduction

In this part we'll be finishing the model. The below chapter will be discussing UV mapping for texturing.

UV Mapping

UV mapping is the process of converting a 3D model into a 2D plane that can be textured in a 2D editing program to add color, bumpmap, etc. This is done through UVs. UVs are similar to vertices, but, unlike vertices, they work in 2D space using the UV editor in Maya. The images below describe the UV mapping workflow.

Finishing The Model

Here's where we left off:

First we're going to need to delete the image plane. So, on the side view port camera, go to view>image plane>image plane attributes>imageplane1.

Go to edit>delete.

Now we need to delete the layer (this layer also contains a smooth proxy), so open the layers editor and right click on the layer and select delete layer; this will remove the reference from the smooth proxy, enabling us to select it now.

I have a tutorial covering removing smooth proxys; you can read it here. I've shortened the steps here.

Step one - Select the smooth side and delete it.

Step two - Select your model and go to mesh>mirror geometry... Open the options and set the mirror direction to -X (same as our smooth proxy), check merge with the original and check merge vertices.

Step three - Some of the model's vertices will be "crimped" together.

To fix this, select your model and open the attributes editor. Go to polyMirror# and set the merge threshold to something like 0.008 or 0.010. This will prevent that from happening but still merge the two halves together.

On to smoothing. Select your wings, body, and head piece and go to mesh>smooth... Open the options by clicking on the box.

We want to smooth more times than when we were smoothing it previously. So set the divisions to 2. We don't want to preserve any of the geometry, so uncheck the preserve options.

Now click smooth.

Now to clean up the scene. If you remember in part one we were talking about history, all that history is still there; this will cause problems later on. Since we no longer need to edit the history, we should delete it. So go to edit>delete all by type>history. This deletes all the history in the scene. If you wanted to delete the history for only the selected objects, you would go to edit>delete by type>history.

Delete the curve we used to create the leg. If we didn't delete history before we deleted the curve, it would also delete the left leg. This is because there's a connection between the curve and the extrusion history on that leg. The reason the other side wouldn't be deleted is because when you duplicate the leg, the leg's history is deleted.

UV Mapping

Due to the simplicity of our model, we're not going to go into a full-fledged UV map tutorial, but we'll cover the basics.

First we need to open the UV editor. Go to window>UV editor.

Now select the model.

All those lines that are in the UV editor are the object's UVs in their current position. As you can see it would be pretty hard to paint on because we have no clue where these UVs connect to. This is where UV mapping comes in.

Step one - With the model selected, go to create UVs>planar mapping... Open the options.

Step two - We're going to project a 2D plane on the X axis (side). So check project from X axis. Also we want to check "keep image width and height ratio". The reason we checked this is so it won't get stretched out to fit the maximum UV range.

Click project.

Step three - Now the UV editor is starting to make some sense. You can tell where the UVs are on the model. When we paint our texture (color), we'll be painting on these UVs.

Step four - Notice how we can't paint on the flat part on top of the tail, mainly because we can't see it. We'll need to fix this by doing a planar map that's looking down (Y axis) so we can see the tail. Right click on the UVs in the UV editor and select face. Now select all the faces on the tail. Note: Make a rectangle over them to select them; it's faster.

Step five - Go to create UVs>planar mapping... Open the options. Set the "project from" to Y and click project.

Step six - Press F12 on your keyboard. Now you can select the UVs.

Step seven - We want to use as much of the UV space as possible. So we're going to move some of the UVs around. First we want to move the tail to the right side. Select one UV point inside the tail's UV's (this is called a UV shell).

Step eight - Go to select>convert seleection>to UV shell. This selects all the tail's UVs.

Step nine - Press W to activate the move tool and move the UVs to the right side of the UV range.

Now for the body. We're going to rotate it and make it larger.

Step one - Deselect the tail's UVs by clicking in any empty space in the UV editor. Now select the UV point inside the body's shell.

Step two - Go to select>convert selection>to UV shell. Now, in the UV editor, go to polygons>rotate... Open the options. Set it to 90 degrees and click rotate UVs.

Step three - Press R to activate the scale tool and scale it up to the maximum UV range. You may need to move it a bit closer to the tail.

Step four - Select all UVs (just make a big rectangle over all the UVs) and go to polygons>rotate... and open the options. Set the rotation ange to -90. Click rotate.

Conclusion

Part four will cover texturing and rendering.

Good Luck