Unwrap 3D - Unwrapping a model. tutorial

[page=Introduction]
Here, you will learn how to unwrap a model using the Unwrap 3D program. It's pretty basic but should cover everything you need to know to get started.

[page=Unwrap 3D - Unwrapping your model]
Unwrap 3D tutorial. (Basic)

Ok, first of all, I must stress that you keep every part of the gun seperate and grouped and named efficiently. Otherwise you may have problems knowing what everything is, well, you won't, but name it anyway. It's easier for you, the skinner and the animator in the long run. So I suggest doing so e.g. my Colt 45. has around 23 different groups (Trigger, Hammer, Base, HandGripLeft, HandGripRight, HandCushionTop, HandCushionBottom, Slide, SlidePiece1, SlidePiece2, Barrel, IronSightFront, IronSightBack) etc. This way everythings easy enough to refer to..

Secondly, export as .3ds, then open it up in unwrap 3d.

Step 1: Try and check the following windows similiar to mine as I will probably use some of these and I don't want you to get confused as to why my interface differs from yours.

Step 2: Right click on one of your groups and press "Select..." This effectively selects only that piece, hence why you need to have everything pretty well organized and every piece seperate where possible.

Step 3: "2D Tools - UV Mapping - Planar - One Sided - Ok"

Step 4: You now see this. For the barrel that I selected, I thought I would be able to distinguish it better from a front view. So I chose "z - front" and pressed ok. This process right now is basically splitting the model apart to make it look more organized and presentable, and in turn makes it alot quicker and easier to unwrap.

Step 5: Heres hoe it looks when I pressed ok.

Step 6: Now simply move it into some freespace so it isn't a part of all that clutter.

Step 7: You should end up with something like this.

Step 8: On the right of this image, as you can see I unticked everything and left only one group. The trigger. Makes it easier to work on.

Step 9: Under 3D Selection I pressed "Right" which selects all polygons on the right handside. Now, there are small problems with this, i.e. in barrels where it will select the outside right facing polygons and the inside. To remedy this, you simply hold ctrl and left click on the faces you do not want.

Step 10: "2D Tools - UV Mapping - Planar - One Sided - Ok"

Step 11: Now, as I selected only the right handside, it should be fairly obvious what to do here. You select "x - right" then press OK. This will then unwrap only these selected polygons on a right view, keeping everything correct.

Step 12: As you can see, theres now the left and right handside, but we're not over yet, because the old piece is still connected to all the surrounding polygons, minus the right handside.

Step 13: On the top left, marked in red, you can see the "Vertex Selection Tool" Press on that for our next part.

Step 14: Moving the vertexes, you can roughly start lining everything up. Then by selecting a row of vertexes, then pressing on the bottom left button clearly marked, it will automatically align everything perfectly.

Step 15: After that stage, it looks really clean, as you can see.

Step 16: By going back to the Faces Selection Tool, and selecting 2 faces from each connecting piece, you can easily see where it links up before you start to align everything up. So you don't get anything back to front causing skinning problems later on :)

Step 17: If you were working on this model or working on a trigger similiar to it, after a small bit of practice your end product would look something like this.

Again, I'm no writer or tutorial guru, and I've only learned Unwrap 3D today, so any problems, get in touch and I can steer you straight and/or update the tutorial to explain something a little more etc.