Yeah, I know a UV map is flat representation of a 3d model, sort of like a world map is a 3d representation of the world. But who can paint a map of the world using only the geological coordinates of the objects in the world? Sounds like an interesting project, but it is just plain crazy.

The world is not a perfect sphere, but really a messy continuous flow of valleys and hills. So how would I paint a window on the statue of liberty from a 2d representation of the city of New York? Sorta counter-intuitive to say the least.

This stage of the process for making game assets is really getting me, because I don't have a team of people, and I want my textures to be good.

Actually, this would be possible if only the free version of sketchup would let me export my models with the textures correctly displaying in Blender. I can use projection painting for organic models.

So yeah, I am using Sketchup for more hard-surface modeling, and I prefer it too. I looked up a UV plugin for sketchup but couldn't get it to work.

My workflow is Sketchup to Blender to My Game Engine.

But Sketchup to Blender is glitchy (for now) accept if I don't mind my models having that plain white material with ambient occlusion. Blender to My Game Engine is questionable (UV unwrapping is a pain). My Engine doesn't have level design stuff built into it, so everything is imported.

I must find a better solution (don't have the money to spend on Zbrush right now). Any tips, links or tricks for making this UV unwrapping process less frustrating?

Okay, so I did some brainstorming, and figured that the one thing I should get down is UV-unwrapping a curved surface. And the first tutorial I found on doing this is a good start.

Very good tutorial, but all of this for a pipe.

I'm not sure if I understood your problem. Please be more concise.

The world is not a perfect sphere, but really a messy continuous flow of valleys and hills. So how would I paint a window on the statue of liberty from a 2d representation of the city of New York? Sorta counter-intuitive to say the least.

What is generally done is to map different elements with whatever way it makes them look best - so the "world" would be a spherical mapping, the "statue of liberty" would be a cylindrical mapping or a combination of several mappings etc.
In the end, all of these elements are presented in the same flat form (they are all aligned to the screen) when mapped, so regardless of the original mapping projection that you used on each element, they are all aligned and you can neatly fit them onto the UV space.

There's this obscure modeller, DeleD, specifically made for level design. It used to be a commercial product but was later released as open-source and the community worked on it, releasing it under a "CE" community-edition. Perhaps give it a try?
http://www.delgine.com/index.php?filename=product_deled

Okay, so I did some brainstorming, and figured that the one thing I should get down is UV-unwrapping a curved surface.

Another option is to unwrap that surface before curving it: it would be a simple, straight cylinder.
When you curve it with a "bend" modifier, it should preserve that mapping.

There's this obscure modeller, DeleD, specifically made for level design. It used to be a commercial product but was later released as open-source and the community worked on it, releasing it under a "CE" community-edition. Perhaps give it a try?

Thank you for that tip! I am downloading it right now. I have been looking over a few tutorials from Andrew Price also, and I think I have found a way to do this faster by using the "Project from View" uv unwrapping, and then just editing the UVs.

DeleD reminds me of 3ds max a little. I think this is going to be a good software, and it isn't so clunky either. Thanks again.

Hi,

Hey, we are really talking about an area here that is really an art! Great art typically is not easy for the artist!

My absolute favorite program for UV mapping and applying normal mapping of textures is Wings3D. It imports and exports in a bunch of standard file formats.

Blender is next on the list for these two areas of modeling. If you want good unwrapping, then it just takes a lot of practice.

Skill and hard work are far more important than the software used. Part of the skill is to learn to focus on one area of the model and texture at a time. For example, if you draw or otherwise make a temporary outline of lips or eyes as a layer in a 2D program such as GIMP, then you should see that outline of the character part in the UV map viewer of the program that you are using. Next you align all the completed part outlines (sometimes called a void) with the 3D surfaces by moving those surfaces in the UV map viewer. Later you can hide the outline layer in GIMP (or other 2D image manipulation software) or even make it barely visible as a guide to add your own face or other body parts.

There are plug-ins for different software, for example, baking textures and painting, and some come with such features. More research is needed by you to find the right combinations of available features for this particular workflow pipeline.

Look more closely at Blender. Take a look at Milkshape3D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MilkShape_3D A friend of mine who is also a pro 3D modeler uses Milkshape3D for much of his work. It has a huge export file format list. I can't remember if you can bake textures, but take a look.

Extreme high quality, even "photorealistic" characters can be made using these manual techniques. They are difficult because this is an art form. The advantages are extreme photorealistic quality with the potential of no money cost to the artist.

When it comes to custom art (made by you) it simply takes research and very skilled artwork.

I hope that I helped you with information leading to the right exchange of model file formats so you can get all that you want in this.

Any tips, links or tricks for making this UV unwrapping process less frustrating?

Here are some tips:

1. Unwarp only meaningful regions of the mesh and never the whole mesh at once. If the tools supports it (blender does), then mark the edges as uv-edge to create islands of surface regions.

2. Consider, that there are two distinct approaches to texture a model. The pre-defined texture unwrapping and the custom texture approach. If you use pre-defined textures, eg you have an existing stone-wall texture, you unwrap a region and use the uv-editor to drag the 2d grid over the exsting texture until it fits. The other way is, to unwrap a mesh, use a test texture (eg checked ) and try to utlize the target texture best you can. In this case you use the uv-editor to position, rotate and scale regions of the mesh onto a (single) texture until you have almost no space left over, a good, harmonic resolution etc.

The pre-texture approach is often used for (modular) environment art, whereas the custom texture approach is for single properties, characters and items.

Unwrapping and texture painting is like rigging and animation. Unwraping (rigging) can be done quickly, whereas painting (animation) is the more time demanding part. But if you are not careful with the unwrapping(rigging), then you will have a lot of trouble avoiding artifacts while painting(animating), like seams, stretches, different texel resolutions etc.

The other way is, to unwrap a mesh, use a test texture (eg checked ) and try to utlize the target texture best you can. In this case you use the uv-editor to position, rotate and scale regions of the mesh onto a (single) texture until you have almost no space left over, a good, harmonic resolution etc.

I so forgot about that method. I actually did this once for a face, but I got bad artifacts at the seems. And I know sometimes people have to hide seems (behind an ear or something, or under a hair object), but I have no idea how to mark the seems well enough to hide em. haha.

Right now I am trying to unwrap a sky dome into a rectanglar shaped UV so I can just add 2d images of skies to the dome. Trying to do it on my own to learn more about UV unwrapping in Blender. I am wondering if there is any type of best practice, or any rule-of-thumb for this, or if it is just so various that no one figured it was worth the time to create a standard workflow.

Okay, I did it! Sorta. I took some advice from the feedback here and I unwrapped each section with the best method for getting it close to what I wanted.

I unwrapped the top with just a regular unwrap, and I unwrapped the rest of the faces with a spherical projection ONLY AFTER I HAD MOVED THE CAMERA TO AN ORTHOGRAPHIC SIDE VIEW (which is important to getting it right).

Edit: Well, I still have a really ugly seam right along the edge, and since I unwrapped the top the way I did, when I try to weld it, things get ugly. Now I have to figure out how to unwrap a circle into a flat plane. hehe.

Tried something different here:

No seams. I did a "project from view" unwrap from a top orthographic view.