First time unwrapper here.

[Tim Nelson]

I'm trying to figure out how to unwrap a dome object. I have to do this so the tiles at the top are as big as the tiles at the bottom. I've been trying to figure out how to uvw unwrap it, but I haven't quite grasped how it works yet. Could somebody maybe post a screenshot of how the unwrapping is supposed to look?

[Ernest Burden III]

It all depends on the projection method used. It starts with 'regular' mapping and then produces the UVs that you can play with.

 

CAN a dome have equal-area squares?

[Tim Nelson]

Well the objective is to put a mosaic tile material on the dome. And as it stands, the tiles on the bottom are so much bigger than on top which of course looks like..., well really bad.

 

I was trying to unwrap it and thought I was somewhat getting the concept of it, but it keep getting all garbled up on me.

 

Ernest, are you a Max man now?

[intero_usa]

Hi Tim, try this:

 

In the unwrapping editor, when all faces of your object slected, try to apply "tools->relax dialog" and use these values:

 

relax by face angles

interations 500

amount 1

keep boundary points fixes - on

 

Click "apply", it will tweak your mapping lil bit. It will remain funny, but will be better then before.

[Tim Nelson]

Hey thanks Alex. It's still kind of funky, but it's probably good enough to get the job done.

[Ernest Burden III]

Ernest, are you a Max man now?

 

No comment.

 

Well the objective is to put a mosaic tile material on the dome. And as it stands, the tiles on the bottom are so much bigger than on top which of course looks like..., well really bad.

 

I dealt with that problem recently. However--I'm unable to remember on what. I'm losing my faculties by listening to all that young-peoples' music.

 

When you are covering a dome with equal-sized objects there will be gaps and you will not get even rows radially. A good UV relaxing may get you a good equal surface area map, but the real object cannot be perfect. Each row of tiles up the dome has to have a different number of tiles to make its circumference. It would actually be easier to model the thing than map it.

[Sawyer]

If I remember right the bad-assed toolset polyboost:

 

http://www.polyboost.com/

 

has a nifty feature where you can relax the uvw on the model by painting it on in the viewport. But that is an extra purchase. I have it and do recommend it. I did something simular and I cannot remember either. That is annoying. My excuse is the drugs not the rock and roll.

[Tim Nelson]

Well it's far from perfect, but from a distance there are no glaring differences from top to bottom. It's for an animation so this dome will never really be the focus of attention anyways.

 

Gnarls Barkley rocks by the way.

[Tim Nelson]

That looks pretty nice Sawyer. I'll look into that. Thanks guys.

[ajvbochove]

Try a GeoSphere and UVW Modifier with Face Mapping.

This is a way to get equal faces across a Sphere and get it egualy mapped.

I don't know if this is the solution you are searching for....

Good luck.