After a half-decent auto-unwrapper

[Warlord Zsinj]

This isn't for IW, but rather for my uni project. As you may have noticed from Gnomre's grumbling, I have only a rudimentary knowledge of UV mapping.

I need to do some basic UV mapping for my design project. Therefore, I don't need UV efficiency, because it's just going to be used for renders of the scene. I just need it to be reasonably intelligent about the way it goes about unwrapping the texture, because I will have curved and planar surfaces, and some near-spheres, so that I don't have distortion.

Can someone recommend a program that has a decent auto-unwrap button (or something that would require minimal learning in order to tweak)?

[Argh]

Wings is really easy. Seriously.

[Warlord Zsinj]

Does it have an auto-unwrap function? I'll try go through snipa's tutorial, but I don't really have time to teach myself the whole process, with major deadlines coming up. v-ray (my rendering package) has some standard 'project materials onto a surface' which is acceptable for most rendering situations; so really the ability to hand texture details in photoshop would not mean the difference between having a textured model or not - in terms of time management I have to rationalise whether the advantage in teaching myself to UVmap with wings (even if easy, it'd take a bit of experimentation) is worth the lost time.

[Argh]

It's not an auto-unwrap... but basically, there isn't anything that does even a halfway decent job that doesn't require a little manual editing- er, at least anything I've ever tested, mind you, but that's a lot of the available software, other than Maya, which I've heard is really good (but totally not free).

Trust me, if you can make models, you can use Wings to unwrap stuff. I would happily use it on high-poly stuff, tbh.

[Snipawolf]

I've done it on, er, a "high" poly model before, and it works fine. Maybe an hour or a few to get it done. I'll probably map that gun as 1024x1024, and see just how good I can do a high-res texture. (p. 181 of random wip has the UV, 180 has the model)

Wings is easy enough to use, give it a shot and see how it works for you. Maybe it's what you're looking for, maybe it isn't. Takes 30 minutes, at most, to learn how to UV map decently, the rest of the time is "playing the puzzle game" with all the pieces.

[Warlord Zsinj]

ok, thanks for the replies. I'll give wings a whirl and see how it goes, at least I've got people here who can answer my questions if I run into any problems.

[Forboding Angel]

You'll find that the hardest part of uvmapping is where to fit everything and what scale to do it at.

Map it properly, otherwise you'll go through a lot of trouble and heartache texxing faces that don't even need to be textured above a rudimentary level.

[Warlord Zsinj]

Well, as it's not for a game, it's for renders, efficiency is not a big consideration. Also, once I decide where I'm going to take my renders I really only need to UV things visible there.

[Hoi]

You should really use one day to learn uvmapping, if you have a bad uvmap it's going to be a pain in the ass to texture.

[Warlord Zsinj]

Doubt I'll have a whole day to commit to something like that. The texture doesn't have to be perfect, it'll just allow me to be a bit more accurate with my textures, particularly with getting the scale of things like bricks right, as well as doing some more specific textures rather then a general 'this is concrete' texture.

[rattle]

Wings unwrapping plugin is called Auto UV for a reason. I'd use hard edges to mark the seams. If you do it properly and got no closed surfaces then unwrapping becomes a single click on unfold.

[Pressure Line]

wings also has options for unwrapping spheres, as well as options for mapping by projection. its all very easy to use. and as you say theres a wealth of collective experience here :)

[rattle]

You can also reproject your UVs on the fly based on the normal of your selection

[[Krogoth86]]

If you want something just for UV-mapping have a look at Roadkill. It uses lots of Blender's code for unwrapping stuff and is told to be quite decent (never seriously used it myself though as I'm satisfied with my tools). There are plugins for Maya, 3DS & stuff but there also exists a free standalone version - might be a bit faster than working yourself through a modeller just for that feature...

EDIT:
There also are some introducing videos like THIS ONE to get you started...

[thesleepless]

blender has a few pretty good autounwrappers

[SPRKH]

I am looking for an application which can automatically make models for me.

[FLOZi]

Man, I love it when other people troll Zsinj