hexagon ----> blender make UV ----> mudbox WUT HAPPENED?

[Tenly]

Okay so the images Im including have text on them to show visually what happened. 

I like creating in Hexagon but it makes CRAPPY UVs. SO following the advice of experts...I went into BLENDER which I do NOT love. however it makes superb UVs...took me a wee bit to figure out that my first plan for the UV wasnt gonna be happy in all three programs but finally got a UV map that had no errors in mudbox.

except....grrrrrr...

When I bring the file back into Hexagon the mesh and the UV look great. Though I realize the original fingernail...dont laugh...Im learning....is small. Well eventually there will be a set of 10 so I didnt want them to be HUGE ya know.

But okay...Im happy in Hexagon but its not where I want to paint. I wanna learn this in MUDBOX. but when I come into mudbox the fingernail is so small you cant even see it unless you super zoom in. It wasnt like that until blender became involved though. and the UV is pretty darn small too. Sure does not look like 1024x1024 to me.

I cant figure out what I should do in blender before saving so everything wont SHRINK when it comes into MUDBOX.

I guess I could make the fingernail GIGANTIC and see how that works.

But I wondered...cant I just resize the UV? I couldnt find a way to edit it in mudbox. I can make the mesh bigger but how to make the UV bigger.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

Could you explain what you mean by "small UV's" ?

The UV data itself isn't altered by mudbox, so going by your post I assume you mean the output textures are smaller than 1024x1024 (which sounds awfully big for a fingernail btw).

In mudbox you can set the texture size when you create a new paint layer. To my best knowledge the default is 2048, but if that's not the case, you can always change it yourself.

[arton Rotaru]

Yeah, the size of the UVs is unrelated to the texture size. The UVs are just coordinates of the vertices in a 2D space. You can apply any texture size you want to the mesh.

Such tiny, or should I say such nano objects can be hard to handle, in any 3D application. In Mudbox you will have some trouble with them indeed. However, you can scale the object up in Mudbox. In the bottom Toolbar you'll find a Select/Move Tools button. This will open another toolbar with a Scale option. With this you can scale the mesh.

If you want to paint directly on the flattened UVs in Mudbox, you have to go to UVs & Maps > Flatten to UV Space in the top toolbar. The UVs will be flattened on geometry then. You can zoom in on them there as well. Also, they can be scaled the same way as the mesh object before.

Easier might be to export an up-scaled version from Blender already. You may need to apply Scale & Rotaion after resizing. (Ctrl +A I think).

A texture size of 128x128 px will be huge already for such a tiny thing. Never ever put a 1024 x1024 texture onto a single fingernail in-world.

You could get a few more pixels out of the UV map by flipping one side of the nail upside down. This way the islands can be placed a little bit closer together, freeing up some space, and then both island can be scaled a bit larger again.

Also, such a planar mesh will be much simpler to paint in a 2D image editor like Photoshop IMHO.

While I'm at it, you may want to reduce the polycount of the nail as well, before bringing it inworld. This nail looks like 1000 tris or so. Having 10 of those, maybe 20 with foot nails, would add 20000 triangles to an avatar. Quite a few for just some fingernails. Just saying.