3D Computer Animation
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Instruction Pages by Wobbe F. Koning
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UV Texture Editing

As of Maya 2015, much of what is described here can be easier achieved using the 3D unfold option. The movies linked here may still be usefull in some cases and help you understand UV editing. Part 1 is a basic introduction and Part 4 can still help you in cleaning the UVs

UV Texture editing can be and usually is quite a tedious process. There are different ways to approach it In Maya. The content below was created in part for my advanced classes at MOntclair State University (in particular ARIL 360 - Motion, Texture, Lighting, Mapping) and I hope these get you on your way to lay out your objects in texture space.

Texturing Jane

The folowing playlist of four movies shows one way to texture a head:

There are four parts:

  • Part 1 - The Eyes: starting simply by texturing two spheres. Which may be considered to be kind of silly since one can use a NURBS sphere and get good UVs for free. These simple steps do get you started nicely though
  • Part 2 - Flattening the face: Using a cylindrical projection to get as little distortion as possible when using photographs as base for the textures.
  • Part 3 - Untangling the face: Unfolding all the polygons that overlap in UV space.
  • Part 4 - Finishing up, Relaxing (UV distribution): Improving the distibution of the points in texture space.

Different approaches

The example above starts with a cylindrical projection, trying to wrap a photograph around a head. Other approaches are more concerned with getting the UVs layed out as evenly as possible (trying to make the area polygons take up in UV space in proportion to its area in 3D space) regardless of whether a photograph can than easily be used as base for texture creation,/p>

One such approach can be found here on YouTube, with the second part showing a good instruction on how to sew UV edges.

And here is another one that uses the unfold feature in a different fashion and makes it look real easy.... (Thank you Aldrich / Matt). based on this I created a UV Unfolding Tutorial. This method results in a layout that is less suitable to use with photographic textures than the technique shown in the videos above, but involves less manual labour.

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