Removing Texture Seams in Maya 7+
using the 3d Paint Tool or Transfer Maps
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Introduction:
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One of the most troublesome challenges to the texturing process has long been the way in which we deal with UV seams.
However hard we may try to lay out UV's as efficiently and seamlessly as possible, we are still inevitably left with seams.
Fortunately for us, there are at least a couple of options for removing these seams in Maya!
- We may use the 3d paint tool to paint over seams within Maya
- We may use Transfer Maps* and fix the seams within Photoshop
*(Surface Sampler was renamed to Transfer Maps in Maya 8.0+)
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(Page 2 of 2)
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Using Maya's Transfer Maps tool for seam elimination is a more complicated procedure than using the 3d Paint Tool, but it grants us a great deal more flexibility.
Overall Time: usually ~15 minutes
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Unfortunately, I have no directly applicable examples right now, so we'll use this sloppy one.
Use your imagination! :P
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We'll start off this section by loading up the same model and this time we want to make a scar that runs accross the UV seam and maybe some other stuff.
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Taking a look at the UV's in the UV Texture Editor, we can see where the UV seams lie on our texture.
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So we'll select all the faces that we want to work with (in our case, the ones at the side of his torso).
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Now we'll choose the Duplicate Face optionbox and we'll set it to Separate the Duplicated Faces.
(This is just personal preference, as I find it easier to work with later.)
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I'll just isolate the selection or hide my original mesh so I won't get it confused, and apply a planar map to this Chunk.
(You may have to tweak the UVs, We'll be painting on this in a bit)
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Now let's unhide the Body geometry, move our Chunk to the side, and open up Modify>Surface Sampler
(Texturing/Shading>Transfer Maps for Maya 8+)
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At this point, we select our Chunk and click Add Selected for our Target Surface
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And for the Source Surface, we'll load in the Body geometry.
(What we're doing is baking the texture from our Source texture onto our Target's)
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This looks more complicated than it is ;)
General settings:
We only want a diffuse color map,
File path for the texture,
Texture size to 512,
Format to Tiff, so PS can read it,
Transfer in Object Space
(since our Chunk is off to the side)
Samples to Med/High (accuracy),
Filter to 1 to avoid a blurry map,
Fill seams to 3 to avoid border
pixels from bleeding into UV shell
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Finally, we can open the image in Photoshop and this is what we get:
a projection of our original texture onto our Chunk's UV layout!
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So I quickly pumped some garbage out in Photoshop that's intentionally covering the seams a lot.
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We'll quickly attach our new file texture to the Chunk mesh's shader,
then transfer this map from our Chunk back onto the Body model.
General Settings #2:
Set Target to the Chunk,
Set Source to the Body Mesh,
Change filepath for texture,
Change Texture size to 1024,
Max Search Depth to ~1
(This is to avoid 'plateuing'
in the bake.)
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Click bake, and open it up in Photoshop. This is what we get.
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(Almost There!)
Now we need to add this bake to our last texture file. Unfortunately, the alpha channel is of no help.
But since we baked only a chunk,
the rest of the bake will be black.
This means we can use the magic wand tool to remove unwanted areas
and then blend the new bake with the original texture. (or create an alpha)
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And this is the result!
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As you can see, Transfer Maps is a very powerful tool and allows you all of the tools of Photoshop instead of restricting you to use only the primitive 3d painting tools in Maya.
Using a similar method, you can even use this to bake your texture onto a completely new UV layout. I hope this changed the way you look at UV mapping :)
Feel free to email me with any feedback, comments, or questions.
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Transfer Maps methods adapted from Peter Kojesta's 3ds max article on Gamasutra
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