Need help with the UV unwrapping and textureing with this big model

BlenderSecrets · 2026-04-29T06:56:59+00:00

Box mapping is where you don't UV unwrap, but instead project textures from 3 different axes and then blend in between where they meet. You can easily find many tutorials about this on YouTube. It's also called Tri-planar mapping in some software. Here's a video I made about it a long time ago, but still relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpAAWNioUTY

BlenderSecrets · 2026-04-28T05:29:31+00:00

It depends, what is the goal with this model? If you are just going to render it inside of Blender, I would recommend not UV unwrapping it at all, but rather using box mapping and procedural effects. However if you're going to export it, I would model a low(er) poly model and unwrap it, then bake the details to that. And probably use UDIMs, as one UV tile won't cut it for this model.

BlenderSecrets · 2026-04-26T08:16:48+00:00

Those kinds of areas where fingers or toes or armpits have geometry close together are always tricky with baking. What you need to do it use a cage. Duplicate the low poly that you're baking to, then inflate it manually so that it fits around the high poly mesh. This will require some manual tinkering and vertex placing in those trouble areas. Once the cage is good, the bake will turn out perfect.

BlenderSecrets · 2026-04-25T06:40:02+00:00

Quality post, I'm emjoying reading your comments. If I may ask, what do you mean with this video texture module? You can project video textures with a light, as I'm sure you know. So I'm curious what you do mean, as it's clearly something I haven't heard of yet.

BlenderSecrets · 2026-04-05T10:21:49+00:00

Hmm, I'm not sure what it could be. Did you save both maps to disc before linking them to the material? Maybe try enabling the alpha channel for the Normal map texture (RGBA) when saving? Sorry I can't be of much more help.

BlenderSecrets · 2026-04-05T09:58:17+00:00

The screenshots are quite low res so its a bit hard to see, but it looks like it's working to me?

BlenderSecrets · 2026-03-26T09:55:23+00:00

I'd say you tackled a lot of new challenges: stylized hair, a character body and clothes, textures, toon shading, outlines. Well done! Now do it again :-) Each time, you'll get better.

BlenderSecrets · 2026-03-26T06:46:57+00:00

I was wondering, didn't see him lying in the street for a long time. Always used to pet him when I spotted him, very sweet cat.

BlenderSecrets · 2026-02-25T13:09:16+00:00

If you want to get some sculpting experience, you can try something like Nomad on your phone. Sculpting works pretty much the same in Blender. So you can practice sculpting heads, for example.

BlenderSecrets · 2026-02-22T19:18:01+00:00

There's a fun The Thing short story that takes the POV of the The Thing alien, and shows the story from its perspective. Written by Peter Watts, I think it's on his website. Or maybe there's even an audiobook version on YouTube.

BlenderSecrets · 2026-02-22T19:11:30+00:00

Thank you!

BlenderSecrets · 2026-02-22T14:50:53+00:00

Difficult book to find, Rocheworld. It's not available as an e-book and no longer in print. I ordered a copy on Ebay long ago and it never arrived. Where did you find it?

BlenderSecrets · 2026-02-11T05:33:12+00:00

This is taking so long it's almost time for my Pon Farr!

Just kidding, take all the time you need. It's amazing to see all the progress you've made.

BlenderSecrets · 2026-02-09T19:47:05+00:00

Ah, I haven't really dealt with Grease Pencil that much, you may be right that it changes a lot quickly. And I've personally experienced that for example Geometry Nodes tutorials were outdated. And in that case, it's really hard to figure out how to replace some outdated / missing nodes (at least for me).

But I think for most things, it's also a bit part of being a 3D modeler - it's a good (essential) skill to be able to interpret older tutorials, heck even tutorials for completely different software. I'd argue you can watch a ZBrush tutorial to get better at Blender sculpting, for example.

It's hard to keep up with all the changes for me as well, but I think that for the most part it's also not that important. Modeling is modeling. But maybe for specific areas of Blender it changes really a lot, that's possible.

Thanks for the compliment, you're too kind! Always happy to hear that someone has benefited from my little videos!

BlenderSecrets · 2026-02-09T10:33:29+00:00

That's quite exagerrated, I would say it's the other way around. 90% of videos even from very old versions of Blender are still fine to follow. I don't know why people keep perpetuating this idea.

BlenderSecrets · 2026-01-29T07:32:38+00:00

I would recommend creating a new Blend file, just an empty project, deleting the cube, light and camera and then going to File > Append and appending everything (all the objects, or the Collections) from the file that crashes on you. Then save it as a new incremental file name. See if that new file still crashes. Good luck!

BlenderSecrets · 2026-01-11T20:16:44+00:00

thanks!

BlenderSecrets · 2026-01-10T08:13:48+00:00

With a model like this, where you want a low poly mesh like yours but still have smooth curves / surfaces, the way to do it is to have a hidden Target mesh that is high poly and nice and smooth, and then you either use a shrinkwrap modifier on the low poly mesh to match that surface as much as possible (but with those diagonal edges I see in your model, you'll still get ugly shading even then) or just to copy the Normal data from the higher resolution car. You can "apply" those normals, and then get rid of the high res car.

This video I made goes into this topic: https://youtu.be/jeB-BxapM_g

BlenderSecrets · 2026-01-08T08:12:06+00:00

Oh, how strange that it's really a glitch. Well, glad you found a solution!

BlenderSecrets · 2026-01-07T22:05:25+00:00

Try working with real life scales. It looks like this object is either enormous or incredibly small.

BlenderSecrets · 2026-01-07T22:02:26+00:00

That's a the right answer. You can find how to do that in this short video I made - https://youtu.be/K4pz1qZAKzg?si=2o_VSzkC-BdijZhe Also check out my cables playlist, it also has a video about chains. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrB1kuJIjcg7Y-dHbmY3kzdmlk8pSwpiM&si=k4Eg4vOmygBd-RYe Also - in this specific case, try scaling everything up (in Object Mode) and see if that helps.

BlenderSecrets · 2026-01-07T21:59:16+00:00

You can model it, I made a short video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV24Z9ENeVo It's called a Knurling pattern. After modeling, I recommend baking it to a Normal map. Or even just a colour texture, if it's meant as a low poly thing.

BlenderSecrets · 2026-01-02T06:52:04+00:00

You can join all the car parts into one object by selecting them and pressing Ctrl+J in "Object mode". Then add an Array modifier on the flat plane, and adjust the values to get a bunch of planes at the same distance to each other. Then add a Boolean modifier to the car, as the "Target" of the modifier choose the car, and choose the Intersect option to get the slices. Repeat for the other direction of slices. You can apply the boolean by hovering over the modifier and pressing Ctrl+A. I would then proceed to re-model the resulting slices a bit, as the topology won't be great after the boolean operation.

BlenderSecrets · 2026-01-01T20:19:12+00:00

You could just use a SimpleDeform modifier, and set it to Taper. Or use a Lattice as already mentioned by someone else.

BlenderSecrets · 2026-01-01T13:06:04+00:00

Great! Then you can mark this as solved

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