http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/110/2/e/uv_map_1_of_dagothmask_by_chaosgod21-d4x0pi8.jpg

The link above is the UV piece that is for the Main-mask piece of the mesh, the front; To me it looks neat, but easily could be fixed, for the small details that need tweaking.

The link below however, the vertices points throughout the entire mesh are all jumbled up and there are so many to the point of me not knowing how to fix this up. Both so it fits over the mesh and looks neat, while simultaneously not causing any blurring. I can retexture anything, and texture small and extremely simple things, however, adding a completely new texture on a completely new mesh? This has always proven to outbeat me.
http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/110/f/f/uv_map_2_of_dagothmask_by_chaosgod21-d4x0pl1.jpg


I have searched for some hours over google for help on this and put myself through the grudging process of Tutorials, at least six or seven of them I think, and still can't find a way past this.

I know I am missing something simple. . .that has to be the reason, but I don't know what it is.

Any suggestions or feedback?

I am certainly no expert, but I have a few thoughts:

So, you are attempting to unwrap the mesh shown, and that is the uv map you are ending up with? First, do you have blender split into two windows, so you can see the mesh and the UV map at the same time? Second, do you have "Update Automatically" checked in the UV View menu? And you probalby want to be using face select mode rather than vertex select if you aren't already. Now, you select all of the mesh, and then you do... what? If it were me, I would just roll the dice by pushing "U" and selecting "Unwrap" (not smart projection), then see what happens. Frankly, I would be surprised to end up with what you have there in the second picture. If that doesn`t work, you can always try "Project From View", though obviously you will end up with distortion, but that might be fixable (open the view properties box and enable "uv stretch"). And if that isn`t working for you, you are going to have to start selecting edges and marking seams, to tell the unwrap tool where to cut the mesh apart, but from the look of that mesh it seems unlikely to be necessary.

Well I have unwrapped it while in face-select mode; that was the original way I did that. However, it was more jumbled then what you see in those pics. This is the most clean and nicely unwrapped I have gotten. The first pic, the uv looks nice and is easily workable, the second one however is a complete mess.

1 - Yes I have blender split into 2 windows, however, Taking a screenshot of subwindow will only take a screenshot of one of the two windows within the blender screen.

2 - as for the update automatically, to be honest, I don't think so. However, it could of been checked the whole time without me realizing it.

Wait, the first picture is a UV map? Huh. Looks like the mesh itself, but now I see it is the UV window. Was that a project from view? A picture of what you are trying to unwrap in the second picture might be helpful.

They are both the same things; It is me trying to make the Dagoth Ur mask. The First half [top screenshot], is the Dagoth Ur main-portion of the mask, while the other parts is the smaller portions, such as the tusks, and decorative things. Here is a couple screenies of the actual mesh.



http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/102/2/b/wip_by_chaosgod21-d4vxwat.jpg
http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/101/b/b/dagothurmaskrevamp3_by_chaosgod21-d4vu80o.jpg
http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/101/5/d/dagothurmaskrevamp2_by_chaosgod21-d4vu7y4.jpg

Only the front-part of the whole model is what you see, with the prongs, the eye holes, and the tusks. The square-cubes around the mask's rim, and the back head-piece are not shown in the previous screenshots of my UV map work.

You see, the second UV map screeny I posted was the Unwrapping of the prongs of the mask, and the Tusks.

Aha. My guess would be that you need to mark some seams.

I did; the second UV map screenshot was the result of those marked seems; you see, both of those UVs screenies you saw, were part of the same whole unwrapped UV map of that face-mask mesh.

I see. Just to make sure, you are marking seams so that the bits of the mesh could be unrolled "flat", and not merely seperating part of the mesh, yes? . That is, you have a seam running down the length of the tusk, from the tip to the base so that if you cute the seam with scissors you could actually unroll it flat? For just seperating parts of the mesh, you would probably be better off splitting off the vertices (selecting the tusks, then "split" from the vertices submenu, and "ok") rather marking seams, so that you can just push "L" to select an entire tusk or both tusks. See what happens when you unroll with a single tusk selected and marked with a seam along its length. Once that is done, you can mirror half the vertices and align them along the edge to make the unroll seamless again if you want. That, or try looking down the tusk and selecting cylinder unroll, but I have had rare success with that. Oh, and try "remove doubles" and try again if none of that works, doubles are hell on unwrapping.

I encounter this type of problem a lot but is simple enough to fix. i believe what is happening is that several different model parts have been merged into single mesh so when it comes to doing the UV map on the part you want ,the UVs for all the other parts which you don't are also displayed and affected as well.With some meshes the UVs can be so entangled that it is impossible to sort them out. What you need to do is to seperate the Visor from the rest of the helmet then when you come to do the UV map it will be only the Visor UV that shows up.

This can be achieved in various ways.

1.Highlight all the vertices of the visor and use the knife tool to detach it from the rest of the mesh ,i don't have blender installed atm and can't remember the exact steps but that is the gist,once the visor is seperated you will be able to work on the UV much more easily as only the visor UV map will be displayed.

or

2. you might be able to load the mesh into Nifskope and find that the visor can be highlighted on its own in which case right click on the highlighted visor and select the crop to branch option this should get rid of everything except the visor , save , load in blender and do the UV and export the NIf . then from a second copy of the helmet mesh highlight the visor and delete it keeping everything but the visor,then copy the branch for the visor with fixed uv and paste it into the nif with missing visor and save,

or

3. Load up the mesh in Blender , highlight all the vertices that are not part of the visor press delete to be left with just the visor,do the UV and save. Load up the complete mesh again ,highlight only the vertices that make up the visor and delete, save mesh. In Nifskope copy the branch data of your fixed visor in the first Nif and paste it into the branch data in the second NIF that is missing a visor and save. Note you will need 2 instances of Nifskope open when transferring branch data from 1 NIf into another.

Hopefully this will help.

As I mentioned above, vertices->split should seperate them enough to work with. You can use vertices->seperate, but then they are seperate objects and not as easy to work with.

http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/111/c/4/3piece_mask_model_by_chaosgod21-d4x2juy.jpg

When I made the mask, I made it into three separate pieces: This is how it looks separated. Each piece you see is a completely separate mesh entirely.

What I am trying to UV map atm is the piece on the far right. the actual mask part with the tusks. And that in complete, is also the UV which screenshots are showing.

http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/111/9/1/tuskdagothmaskpiece_by_chaosgod21-d4x2lok.jpg

http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/111/1/9/tuskdagothmaskpiece2_by_chaosgod21-d4x2lqw.jpg

http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/111/1/e/tuskdagothmaskpieceuvmap_by_chaosgod21-d4x2lsl.jpg

These are the results of me Splitting the Tusk from the Rest of the mask; However, those lines have randomly appeared; Now, in Tron Villains words, you told me to make seams down the middle? When I do that, more of those lines appear through the texture.

As for the Uvmap of the Tusk, well, it is shown in the foremost bottom screenshot. I am slowly getting this to work; lol. However, the Tutorials I am going through don't detail the issues that arise, otherwise I wouldn't be bothering any of you. So I appreciate all of the help! Really, thank you both!

I meant just one seam, from the tip to the base along one side, not cutting the tusk in half down two sides. Still, you could make that work - just select one of the uv map pieces and then mirror, rotate, and translate until it lines up with the other half. Set snap to nearest and use ctrl to snap together the edge vertices of they don't match perfectly.

That tusk would look better if you try a different UV method , for that sort i think the projected one would work better as it would be seamless,i can't remember the exact name of it but there are 3 or 4 different uv mapping techniques in the menu you can try.

Project from view would make it seamless, but then you have horrible distortion on the sides that are off view that can be a pain to fix.. As I said, that could be made seamless with a little mirroring and rotating.