[SOLVED] Weird UV Unwrapping issue in Blender

[Butler Offcourse]

Good morning @Aquila Kytori 🙂 We wrote I guess at the same time as I had edited my previous post 🤪 I have somehow fixed the shading with an edge loop , I shared it on my edit that I had posted like 1-2 minutes before your post.  Here's my blend file:

https://pasteall.org/blend/32c0a677542f4d43aa1aadc093588af5

Obviously I am always open to the advices and thank you! Note that I still did not reduce the tris numbers as I was curious on how to model a strap! So this means that, If I have my model with the previous topology that you taught me and I liked a lot, as it produces as a cleaner result, I can not add a strap to it afterwards like I was trying yesterday? I mean, is there an ideal way to do it other than the face snap and vertex extrude way that I did? I am asking this to learn if there's a technique that I did not know? I tried to use some common sense, and did it that way, but my common sense is only limited to my actual knowledge of blender, which is nothing compared to more experienced users like you! 🙂

The model is not perfect, yet, but well, I am trying to work on it and improve! 

Also I can use the one with the nice curved edge topology to make simple ballerina flats and use this one for the "strapped/buckled" flats. And.. god...it is soo tempting to apply one more smooth! 😂 

When I look at the shoes, I think that all of the popular brands are cranking the smooths? I was thinking, would it be a nice option to include both a second subdivision modifier applied for who prefer more laggy but realistic shoes in the box and an other optimized one and leave the people choice? Well, I still did not even texture, rig...etc, I am still too far from producing anything yet but I asked it for curiousity!

[Aquila Kytori]

8 hours ago, Butler Offcourse said:

I created a very small edge loop (actually several ones as in this topology, my age loop isn't turning all around but it goes towards the nose. Those edge loops I positioned close to the pipe, then I deleted the excess edges that I didn't want (going towards the nose part and then with knife tool I connected those edge loops,

Next time, To have more control of the added edge loops try hiding a couple of faces before adding. See screenshots below :

Edited March 7, 2021 by Aquila Kytori

[Butler Offcourse]

Wow this something I did not know and to be honest I never thought about it! Thank you very much @Aquila Kytori 🙂 I was always putting the edge loop and then delete the unwanted parts! Talking about edge loops, while I am selecting the edge of the newly created edge loop, while I am alt + clicking the edge connected to the pipe, it is selecting the whole edge, whereas while I am doing it on the other side, it I have to make multiple selections as it is not selecting. There are no ngons around them whatsoever, I never understood it, and this happens when I am modelling this way. When I modelled it your way, it does not happen and it always selects all around. What is the logical reason for this? Here you can see what I mean:

 

Also now that you have the foot as well with the shoe, do you see why I have to have that weird raise in Z on the corner next to the starting of the pinky toe and then go back down towards the other toes? I think that with that foot shape, if i want toe cleavage, this is the only way, or am I doing something wrong? 

Thank you very much again for your reply! So now I have the green light to go forward?

And also to answer your previous question that I saw now, the edge of the edge loop joining to the pipe is marked with a crease, I did not mark sharp I guess, I still did not get used to use both of them I suppose. Even before the edge loop there I had the crease, but I guess that I had not marked sharp.

Other than extreme poly counts for now since it is not reduced, do you see any other bad things on the model? The sole is a bit messed up from the side view, I was not able to do it very well even thought this is the much improved version compared to when I was playing with it yesterday night. I tried to make it smoothed by hiding the vertices above keeping only the thickness surface of the sole and played with proportional move with big brushes to give it a smoother curve. 

Wow I am glad to see that in a way I am improving and all with the help of you all! Thank you so much 🙂 When I first posted here, I was thinking that I was going to upload my first model to SL in a couple of days 😂

[Aquila Kytori]

I only just saw your new posts ............

I will try to answer the other questions this evening but for now :

35 minutes ago, Butler Offcourse said:

Talking about edge loops, while I am selecting the edge of the newly created edge loop, while I am alt + clicking the edge connected to the pipe, it is selecting the whole edge, whereas while I am doing it on the other side, it I have to make multiple selections as it is not selecting. There are no ngons around them whatsoever, I never understood it, and this happens when I am modelling this way. When I modelled it your way, it does not happen and it always selects all around. What is the logical reason for this?

Its all to do with Poles.

Poles are where edges come together. Usually when modelling with quads, its mostly 4 edges coming together and you have no problem selecting or adding complete edge loops.

But when you have any thing other than  4 edges meeting at a single vertex, ( its called an E- Pole when more than 4 and a N-Pole when only 3,  I had to look up the correct terminology  ) the edge loops get stopped at that pole.

Check your model and you will find the responsible  E pole :

 

[Butler Offcourse]

@Aquila Kytori , thank you very much for your explanation! Fantastic! crystal clear now, thank you so much! 

Then I would love to add one more question for the evening (or whenever you have time to answer  ) , so here's the shoe this way, I like it, elegant, classy..etc. Well, do not shoot me for the extra subdivision modifier (NOT APPLIED! LOL, just pleasing my eyes  ) , if I want to let's say write a text on the black strap, such as a brand, a word ..etc etc and raise it and colour it gold to have it as if some metal text was attached to it.

- I could have a lot of subdivisions to the strap, then extrude and shape it like the text I want, would be very time consuming, yes, but also would increase by A LOT the tris count.

- I could use shift + a and text and add a text but then if i boolean it to the surface , it would again create too many subdivisions and it could even look messy, so would kill the purpose!

- I could use shift + a and text and position it on top of my surface, join it with ctrl + J and keep it that way. 

Which one is the best? I guess the third option is the best, but I wanted to get your idea. Here's an example that I did to illustrate:

 

As I was suspecting, just the text, added 10k more tris! I could use a simpler font, and may be modify the vertexes to reduces it, but I really wanted a font like this! 

An other option could be may be baking this as a normal and then use it on my final model? I fear that the resolution may not be good enough but I may be definitely wrong.

If I did not want it to be raised, I could bake it only as a diffuse texture. 

Arghh, optimizing is harder than I thought! 😊

EDIT: While a bit of looking around, searching on youtube..etc, what I did was, after converting to mesh, instead of extruding, I added a solidify and beneath it I made a remesh modifier keeping the values as low as possible to avoid cranking up a lot the numbers of tris. Applied them both and then I took only the top surfaces and deleted as much as loop cuts/segments that I judged "unnecessary"  then applied the shrink wrap modifier to the shoe to take the shape, then I extruded it outwards, hid the rest keeping only the letters, deleted the lower faces that should be touching the base of the shoe and doing like this, I was able to bring down the tris count for the letters to 2.291 tris while still keeping the thickness, this is as much/good as I was able to do with my still limited knowledge, here is two screenshots.

 

EDIT 2: I uploaded the models to SL, as I love seeing what I create become real in a way And wanted to see the difference between the higher poly version. So the one on the left is 20k tris, and the one on the right is 5k tris ( well, half of it is the writing ), and to be honest I did not see such an huge difference. The biggest difference I saw on the pipeing. Well the piping sucks on both of them because I stretched it's UV island in X to a very thin line, so as a result, the resolution of it sucks LOL. On the other hand, I am pretty happy on how it turned out the gold on the nose in SL.  

I have been also surprised to see that both of them has 1 land impact, I was expecting much more for the higher poly version. But please note that when I upload it to SL, I am putting 0 as a value for the lowest LoD with the advice of a friend to have a less upload fee for my trial models, so it may have an impact on the land impact, I don't know, I am still experimenting and trying to see and understand the relation between prims, tris..etc. Even tho the prim number is not important for clothes (according to what I hear or read, I am still checking it by curiosity.

I am still struggling to have my leather texture to look as sharp as it looks on blender, or as sharp as it looks on certain shoes that I see in SL. I even tried using sharpen filters in Affinity Photo, did not really help. And I should also find a good compromise for the blacks as the black shoe in SL looks lighter (Ambient Occlusion was turned off.). The models you see are using the same bake texture of the higher poly version, it is just the combined texture, I did not use material textures.

Now I am baking the texture with 1024 sample instead of 256 that I have been using and I am baking it at 2048 * 2048 pixels. I had read somewhere that SL is making a better job resizing it other than image manipulatoins apps, so I am curious if it will help. Let's see.

 

 

EDIT 3: Hello again! 😊 So here's some progress. I have somewhat made the shoe more black as I wanted. I went to the world settings, I had put an HDRi because I wanted to have some outdoor reflections on the metal nose part. It is adding a lot of lighting which I do not want, but I still did not find the correct way to disable it's lighting properties and use only it's reflections, so at first I decreased it's exposure and strength to 0.5 from 1. You can see the result on the lower poly model on the right. The black was nice but the nose was too dark, so then I went to the shader node editor and I saw that the specularity was set to 0.5, I brought it to 0.1 and now it looks more black with the nose being lighter than the right one, you can see it on the example on the left. Having said that I would like the nose part to be lighter, so I am still searching a way, I will continue playing with the material nodes. I also increased the texture space of the pipe unwrap and it looks much better. I also turned the main body diagonally once how @Aquila Kytori showed me on her alternative example of UV Unwrap to be able to cover more space for the body, and it seems like now the texture is looking better! Here I am adding some examples, what do you think? The gold color is different from the one above because I decided to tint it to rose gold. 

 

 

EDIT 4: Decided to make the nose a bit longer, even though it leaves a bit of space from the big toe, but proportion wise looks nicer on foot! I guess I will continue with this proportion, now time to do the sole and the insole!

Edited March 7, 2021 by Butler Offcourse

[Aquila Kytori]

I am never going to be able to catch up on all the questions you ask ! lol

This is more of a comment...........

7 hours ago, Butler Offcourse said:

EDIT: While a bit of looking around, searching on youtube..etc, what I did was, after converting to mesh, instead of extruding, I added a solidify and beneath it I made a remesh modifier keeping the values as low as possible to avoid cranking up a lot the numbers of tris. Applied them both and then I took only the top surfaces and deleted as much as loop cuts/segments that I judged "unnecessary"  then applied the shrink wrap modifier to the shoe to take the shape, then I extruded it outwards, hid the rest keeping only the letters, deleted the lower faces that should be touching the base of the shoe and doing like this, I was able to bring down the tris count for the letters to 2.291 tris while still keeping the thickness, this is as much/good as I was able to do with my still limited knowledge,

To reduce the tri count further fill in the faces by hand ...........

For each letter of the text select only the edge vertices that really matter and make a copy - new object of these edge vertices.

Then fill in the missing faces by hand. Doing this I managed to get the tri count down to 585.

 

I also noticed in your Ballerina WIP.blend file that you don't have the Auto Smooth enabled, ( see screenshot above).

I usually enable that option if I  have smooth shaded faces on my model. When enabled you may find you need to play around with the slider to get best results. Also with Auto Smooth enabled it is sometimes useful to Add a Weighted Normals modifier:

 

7 hours ago, Butler Offcourse said:

I am still struggling to have my leather texture to look as sharp as it looks on blender, or as sharp as it looks on certain shoes that I see in SL. I even tried using sharpen filters in Affinity Photo,

The more pixels that you can map the UV's to the sharper will appear the texture. Thats one of the reasons why it was suggested earlier that you should waste as little UV space as possible. And also why some creators use more than 1 1024² texture on a shoe !! 

 

Edited March 7, 2021 by Aquila Kytori

[Butler Offcourse]

Thank you very much for your replies @Aquila Kytori 😊 Yes I know, sometimes I get carried over LOL!

Oh I had not thought about remaking the faces, good idea! I will try that, thank you!! 😊

Auto smooth? I never ever used it, didn't even know such thing existed! is it something that only effects the shading or does it effect also umm when you move vertices and if it sucks the position it moves it to a better position to keep a curve? I doubt that as in case you wanna make a weird shape, it wouldn't do, so i think that it affects only the shading! Lovely! I will try! I had not tried the normal weighted modifier neither, need to try it too! thank you! Will these be exported to SL as well? Well, if they are modifiers, they should, should I apply it or just keep it there?

Yes! I understood the importance of not wasting the space and I am having more fun the more I understand the things! but the problem is that, the more I understand stuff, the more questions I happen to have! LOL

Now my biggest problem is the sole, it is too messed, not nicely curved, trying proportional editing, moving them..etc but I did not manage to do something lovely yet. 😕

EDIT 2:  So I couldn't resist anymore, so I somehow modelled the sole and the insole, I used autosmooth as well, here are some screenshots.

The very High Poly Model - 27k tris:

 

 

And here is the lower poly model - albeit still high poly with 6.5k tris (I still need to optimize the model, and also the text, but my only concern is the pipe as the pipe looks junky even with this tris count 😕

And this is for now how I did the UV Map. Now I will be researching to see how to add a decal in Blender to a surface where I was thinking of adding to the insole. Once I have some progress, I will let you know! 

Edited March 7, 2021 by Butler Offcourse

[Butler Offcourse]

😂

 

 

Edited March 8, 2021 by Butler Offcourse

[Aquila Kytori]

On 3/7/2021 at 12:06 PM, Butler Offcourse said:

The biggest difference I saw on the pipeing.

Add a few more loops cuts in the piping where the radius of the curves are  smaller:

 

https://pasteall.org/blend/fc1fe20cd2064fdab230db08f7015405

 

[Butler Offcourse]

Hello @Aquila Kytori thank you very much for the time you take always to answer my questions, much appreciated! 

You know what? I always prefer how the shoe looks in your screenshots even if it is my model LOL! I will try it that way as well! thank you so much and I will look at your model! Today I have been playing with the text tools, cleaning them..etc, baking them..etc. Then I decided to do the both parts as you see, i want there to be written Sunday Funday, so I could not use a simple mirror. So here's what I did:

- First mirrored it thru the modifiers and then applied it. 

- Then I realised that the branding text (added with photoshop) that I had written inside of it god messed up with orientation, being flipped as mirror was a flip horizontally. So I felt like I hit a wall as well. And also the text on the toe part of the shoe should have been different. I could reunwrap the mirrored shoe but then I was scared that I would definitely not be able to size the parts same as the other one, so any branding text, details/stitches..etc that I could want to add on photoshop later on the baked texture would vary in sizes and positions between the right and the left side.

- So started to think a little bit and decided to do like this. Seems like it is working. On the mirrored shoe, I went to the UV map with all my parts, selected all the UV islands, and then I scaled everything in X with -1 value. So basically I flipped it horizontally.

- Then went and deleted the 3d text on the nose part and copy & pasted the text that I wanted on it that I had created earlier. Joined them, pinned the shoe uv islands leaving free only the text UVs to be unwrapped. So unwrapped it, filled the empty spaces with it.

- Then baked it this way, went on photoshop,  took the  baked texture of the other shoe where I had added the brand name (imaginery brand) and flipped it horizontally to use the position of the text as a guide (decreased the opacity of the guide layer). So on the new bake texture I repositioned my flipped texture to a very similar position as the other pair (almost pixel perfect) and saved it.

- Then to test, went to the blender, I applied a new material to the whole shoe. A basic one. Then went on to the node editor, I disconnected the standart shader, created a UV map node where i selected my uv map, created an image texture node where I put the baked and editted texture and then connected it to the final surface output and the result seems to be working pretty well! 

Is this the correct way of doing it? Soon I will share the photos!

BYW I love how you reduced the edge number and how nice your vertexes are alligned! Now I am taking the final bakings to upload to SL to see how it looks  Then I will proceed by starting to be ruthless with my edge loops!

 

EDIT: Here how it looks in SL, with baked textures. Always the high poly model, but the textures are starting to look nice. I am starting to enjoy how it is coming along. Now I have to start reducing the the segments (anyways the subdivision is not applied, just applied with .dae export) and increase the segments on the pipe as you have advised to try to improve. Here's some screenshots from SL and the way I have baked the texture. 

Edited March 8, 2021 by Butler Offcourse