Having completed my character the next step is to UV it.
I have already covered UV’ing in unit 69 but the way to UV a character is different. For this demonstration I will be UV’ing a leg from my character. I watched a tutorial by James Taylor on youtube for this. His character was slightly different to mine. Because of this I will see how mine reacts through the different stages. Any problems will give me a better insight into why. I can also re-make a character mimicking his flow if I need to.
To begin I detached one arm and leg from my character as I only need to UV them both once, then copy them later before re-attaching.
Next I separated all appendages so I had a separate head, neck, torso, arm, hand, leg, and foot, leaving them in place for easy attachment later.
Selecting the leg I chose face mode and highlighted the front half of the leg. With this done I moved my cursor over to the UV editor, held shift and right clicked to open the radial menu. There I selected ‘planar’. Casting a planar representation into the editor. I then repeated for the back of the leg.
Next, while still in the editor, I selected UV mode, drag selected all of the projections vertices, highlighting them. Shift-right clicking again I selected unfold and repeated this for the other projection. Leaving me with a front and back projection.
Now I needed to connect them into one, unfolded UV of the entire leg. To do so I needed to have a seam where I could connect them both. Th e advised way is to copy the seam placing on clothes, preferably one that will be seen very little. The best for this example is on the inside of the leg. Selecting edge mode in the view port I traced a line up the entire length of the leg. As I did the corresponding edges highlighted on the UV’s in the editor.
With them selected I, again, moved to the editor, shift- Right clicked, and selcted the ‘move and sew UV’s’ option. Immediately the two halves of the leg attached down the seam. Once done all I needed to do was select UV, in the editor and unfold the stitched object.
The rest of the body was UV’d in this manner except for the foot(top and bottom). The hand(top, bottom, and thumb front and back), stitching the two sides of the thumb together with the upper an lower faces of the hand stitched on each side of the thumb. The head( a seam up the back, amended in the video once planared to around the back of the skull), also the ears were detatched from the UV and unfolded seperately, and the neck(cut down the nape).
My Blueprint Factory 