What would you like to see...

Ioannis my workflow generally consists of modelling the creature; using zbrush, or maya or a mixture of both. Once that is done, i use one of the automated programs, uvlayout, to lay out the uv coordinates in seperate shells.

Uvlayout has a flattening function that tries to keep all the coordinates proportional to one another - this minimises what people call 'stretching'.

Because the UV map can be completely different in proportion to the actual model - you can have one tiny polygon taking up most of the map, if you desired - the amount of pixels that are effectively painted upon a given area can vary within the model depending upon how the map has been set up. Uvlayout allows you to even out the stretching all over the model (note, that sometimes, you dont want to take up too much uv space for parts of the geometry that will never be seen, but thats not really necessary most of the time).

Once I have a workable UV layout, i re-import the object back into Zbrush for texturing.

Zbrush is kind of 3d-meets-photoshop, they market it as '2.5d'. It allows you to paint directly onto the surface of the model, and do all kinds of funky things. You can model in it entirely (the ape in my first post of this thread was done in zbrush), however there are constraints to doing that that i wont go into.

but effectively, when painting textures, you are able to choose from a variety of blending modes, like photoshop (colorize, highlight, blur etc etc) and use generic or custom-made brush alphas as well, which help for painting textural areas.

Also, the UV maps used by Troika for ToEE mostly make use of overlapping uv coordinates. I've also gone with this approach (its good for use in low poly computer game models as you get a lot more mileage out of small UV maps).

If you look at the drider model i created, i actually made the map for the model on an incomplete model; then cloned the leg geometry (along with the correct uv coordinates) for the other legs, before finally mirroring the whole model (creating a symmetrical creature).

Very handy technique for maximizing your uv map

This is what the model looked like while i mapped it in zbrush:

 

here are the uv maps i've used for the regular beholder, and both driders - notice that its all done as a half of a model; so as to use symmetry (only one set of leg/eyeball textures too)

They're all 256x256 files, i figure for a large or bigger size that is ok

 

started on a naga

 

and here's the dark version

 

sword spider

taking some artistic license here... -technically- they're meant to have brown stripes... but meh

 

just realised it needs more eyes hehe...

might try one with all blade-legs too, just to see...

 

ok a new skin for use on the black widow model?

 

try this out allyx

 

Initial rough of a dragon model (i dont expect this to be finished anytime soon though )

 

Looks a bit like Dragotha, to me. Love the phase spider.

 

yuan-ti rough

 

WOW!

I can't believe this thread has been going on for a week without me noticing it.:yikes:

In any case your doing some awesome things here. :clap:

I'd love to see the dryder with the red spider body from your vampire take and the human torso from variant 2. I certainly hope we get a plugin that will handle animations at some point.

You probably already know this, but if not it's handy when reskinning existing models. Since the UVW maps are layed out proportionaly, you can replace them with larger sizes. For instance if the spider skin is 64x64 and your making a colossal spider you can use a 256x256 map without altering the model or UVW layout.

Keep up the excellent work.

Cuchulainn.

 

Hey Cuchu

yeah, so far im actually only working with 256x256 skins... trying to milk as much as i can out of it...

i'm still wondering whether a larger skin would be workable for something like a dragon, or whether its needless... im a sucker for detail

Did you mean in your post that you would like to see the red spider body with the regular torso?