Unwrap a head in Maya with auto unwrap UVs tool (bonus tools)

Unwrap a head in Maya with auto unwrap UVs tool (bonus tools)

Unwrap a head in Maya is an extremely easy process when you make use of the auto unwrap UVs tool from the bonus tools provided by Autodesk for free. With the auto unwrap UVs tool you can achieve with a few clicks a pretty decent head unwrap result in Maya. Of course, as you can imagine this tool is not only useful for unwrapping a head. You can use it for all kinds of unwrapping objects, organic or mechanical.

The Bonus Tools for Maya have plenty of useful commands that you can use and save a lot of time. A few of them, a separator on a shelf, spiral curve, setup arm-foot, make joints dynamic, mirror animation, reverse animation, mesh locator, and a ton of others. You can have all those and much more under your belt for free.

If you don’t already have downloaded and installed the bonus tools inside Maya (2017-2020), you can do it from the official Autodesk site. You can also see the full list of commands that provide the Bonus tools from the previous link so you can decide if it’s worth your time to install it. Although, I am pretty sure it’s definitely worth it.

After installing the Bonus Tools, a new panel menu will appear in Maya which will be common in all modules (modeling, rigging, animation, etc. and you can have access to all those great tools that have to offer.

bonus tool panel menu
bonus tool panel menu

Another interesting article about UVs for unwrapping a curved pipe in Maya.

You can watch the following video for a quick understanding of the process.

Unwrap a head in Maya, the process:

We will be working on this cartoon girl’s head. At this point, it has pretty much messed up UVs right now. Let’s find out how much the auto-unwrap tool can help us out. I assumed you already have the Bonus tool installed in Maya.

 unwrap a head in Maya, cartoon girl head and its UVs
unwrap a head in Maya, cartoon girl head and its UVs

So let’s get to it.

Select the head you want to unwrap and go to Bonus tools – Uv Editing – Auto Unwrap UVs tool. The auto unwrap UVs tool options appears. We have a couple of options to choose from. Although, I found out that the Unfold 3D is working best for unwrapping a head. So leave everything as it is, and click on enter tool or enter the tool and close.

auto unwrap UVs tool options window
auto unwrap UVs tool options window

A couple of things happening:

  • The UI of auto unwrap UVs tool appears in the viewport of Maya
  • Our head geometry turned green
  • Maya give us instructions on how we will proceed

For the first two, there is nothing we can do, which is the normal process. For the third one, the instruction that Maya gives us is to select the edges that you want to define as texture borders then click add or continue.

Maya tells us to predefine edges for texture borders, for our head geometry. Basically, where the UV seems of our head geometry to be. So we have to make a series of edge selections on our model to help Maya understand our needs of seems.

Predefine edges for texture borders:

Theory:

Generally speaking, in a 3D head geometry and frankly, in all kinds of geometries, we want to create a couple of seems, so our UVs have the minimum amount of distortion, which will be critical in the next step of the texturing process. Although, in this article, we will not actually paint any texture on our 3D head model. We try to create seems which will be less visible in our model.

Where you want our seems to be:

  • around eyes
  • the mouth area
  • in the middle of the back to the upper head

Process:

To predefine edges for texture borders inside the auto unwrap UVs tool, we can do that in two ways. We can either, select one area at a time or we can choose to predefine all areas at once and then press add borders and continue. We are going to use the second method, all areas at once.

So, as you already in the auto unwrap UVs tool UI, select all the middle of the back to the upper head edges, like the image below:

select the edges of the middle of the back to the upper head
select the edges of the middle of the back to the upper head

Now, make another edge selection for the mouth area. Try to be in the inner section, so it can’t be visible.

area mouth seems
area mouth seems

Lastly, make the selection of an edge for the area of the eyes. Select the inner edge loop on that area. You can turn on symmetry, to make the selection process faster if you like.

selection of eyes area
selection of eyes area

Now we have predefine edges for texture borders, press add borders, and continue. Lastly press done, so that Maya can run the process behind the scene to unwrap the head for you. That was it. You can see the results in the following images from the viewport in Maya.

unwrap a head in maya, final result with UVs aside
unwrap a head in Maya, final result with UVs aside
unwrap head in Maya final result, with a lot of angles
unwrap head in Maya final result, with a lot of angles

Conclusion:

Unwrap a head in Maya with auto unwrap UVs tool from the bonus tools as you can see is an easy UV technique you can apply. Is not a perfect technique, but I think is a great starting point. And after some manual UVs manipulations on your own, you could come up with a great final UVs mapping.

You can unwrap much more areas with this tool beside the head. I have unwrapped a whole character body with the same technique, which you can watch in the following video.

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Vladi Dan

Hey there. I am an experienced 3D Artist - Graphic Designer for over 7 years. Of course, the learning process doesn't really end. I am more than happy to share my personal knowledge with you guys. Let's create and learn some cool stuff together. I hope you join me on this creative trip.

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