In this Blender 2.5 video tutorial we begin the process of completely UV unwrapping a lowpoly, hard-surface building. The tutorial provides tips on how to deal with a large number of replicated objects and unwrapping a multitude of small parts. Part one covers unwrapping part of the side of the building and the fire escape. Part two will follow shortly to unwrap the remaining pieces.
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Hello, haven’t watched this yet but I just want to say Keep up the good work
I’m learning a whole lot from your videos….
Please check.
It is not playing when clicked.Screen turn black and nothing happens.
On Viemo site,It works fine.
Thanks for another fine tutorial.I’m looking for a building to follow this tutorial.
Thanks Jonathan for this long tutorial
It helped me a lot to better understand the process and the technic for unwrapping in a single file
instead of multiple ones.
Q: when you “merge” in the UV/Image Editor, you select vertices, press “s” for scaling then press “0″ and finaly
“enter” or “RMB” ?? Am I right ??
You can merge that way but it is much faster to simply press “W” to weld the selected vertices together. It acts the same way as merging at center or scaling to 0.
Cheers,
Jonathan
Thank you Jonathan! Maybe I’m strange but when I hear your voice at the start of a new tutorial, I enter relax mode, grab some popcorn and a Coke and settle in. What’s that you say? Other people watch movies or tv? How boring!
Quick question: How did you get the array going in two directions? Vertically and horizontally?
Clear voice, nice tone, good pacing, sometimes hypnotic.
He should make a DVD for the Blender institute!
Awesome, this is exactly what I’ve been working this weekend. So far the best I’ve been able to come up with was seperating a window, deleting the rest of the windows. Unwrapping the now windowless building and the single window, and then duplicating the window, merging it back into place everywhere.
I look forward to watching this video tonight to see what can be improved.
Funny – I was struggling recently about how to do architectural unwrapping. This one will surely help learn something. Thanks a LOT for this!
Nice tutorial, big eye opener for me, especially the fact that you can stack uv patterns. Thank you for doing a tutorial on an architectural topic. I’ve done a lot of architectural renderings, mostly by hand and not even in my most confused and bewildered nightmare, would i even consider applying a texture to something as mundane as the fire escape. But i’m not criticizing i’m just relating an opinion. I love your tutorials.
it’s broken for me an has been for a while :/ just seems to buffer forever, the timeline is doing its animation thing but nothing happens. maybe need alternative links, like youtube.
Hi Martin,
Have you tried watching the video on Vimeo? You can go directly to it by right clicking on the video and selecting “Watch on Vimeo”. That may solve the problem.
-Jonathan
i seen the same problem with the vid yesterday…now it says ‘Sorry there was a problem loading this video.’…could be a vimeo thing..
Definitely, the video is not playing. Been trying to watch it.
hey jonathon, brilliant tutorials u never fail to impress. This tut will come very handy, by the way I really would like to know an easy and quicker way to texture low poly cars, where everything,even the bodies and wheels are textured. The unwrapping of the car body hurts my head especially, is their an easy way to do it in blender. Please help and thanks in advance.
It’s broken for me as well.
Jonathan, it will work better if you split it into 2 pieces, I have found 30 minute pieces work more reliably no matter what delivery method you use. Also I second the suggestion of alternate hosting sources for backup purposes. Thanks, and keep teaching us!
The video does not play.
It just sits there at 0:00:00 with a black screen.
Thanks guys for letting us know about this video, we have had trouble reproducing this on our end, but doesn’t mean we don’t believe you.
Worse case you should be able to click on the title and view directly on Vimeo. We have heard of some “growth” bugs on Vimeo, but are looking into it, and possible at some other video hosting solutions as backups or lead hitters.
If you have any service suggestions or run into problems please send us a support ticket at [email protected]. This way Jonathan and myself get e-mail notifications, reminders, slaps in the face and kicks in the gut if we don’t respond.
We sometimes miss comments with the amount of blender headz we have on the site. Keep on keeping on.
Cheers,
W
Quick update: This may be one of the longest videos we have streaming here, so are going to work to break it up into 2 pieces to see if that alleviates any streaming issues. More as we have it.
Too bad, I have the same problem than the others. It works fine the first days but I didn’t have the time to watch the whole thing. It’s broken here and on Vimeo (flash player and html player) since 3 days (the statistics on vimeo show zero views). It’s certainly a bug on Vimeo, maybe because the tutorial is too long.
Anyway, your website is a great place for learning, thanks.
Don’t know if this is related to the vimeo problem but, as I could not watch the tutorial here on blendercookie, I tried the vimeo site. However I had no luck there either. But then I noticed that there was another video named “UV unwrapping a building – part 01″ and that one works, while the other that doesn’t work is named “UV unwrapping a lowpoly building part 01″. No. 190 and 192 in the subscribers list (or whatever it is to the right of the vimeo player), respectively.
And thanks for yet another tutorial!
I tried several times uploading video ta not correct please thanks
@ Klesus: Thanks, finally I was able to watch this tutorial as you indicated on Vimeo page.
@ Jonathan Williamson: Thanks, awesome video tutorials.
@ Klesus: Thanks! Works that way =)
@Klesus – Great catch actually, I have embedded the code from the one mentioned here on this post. Hope this helps alleviate any immediate viewing concerns. But we are also breaking it up into 2 parts and should link here following the holiday.
I’m just watching this to see if I’m missing anything for my own project. I’m doing this building to be used in the UDK and I have to aplit it up for rendering reasons which involves some interesting UV and texture techniques I had to figure out
Hi Jonathan. This tutorial is awsome i now know how to unwrap the building, but i would like to make a wish
This site has many tutorials and i would just like to se some tutorials about modeling such a building.
Thanks Jonathan for this nice tutorial. I’m new to Blender but I do have a few years experience with 3ds max. Although I’m not 100% sure, I do think that the unwrapping process can be done much more efficiently. Instead of unwrapping each piece individually, wouldn’t it be better to delete all cloned parts of the stairs and unwrap only the unique parts? Then once you are done unwrapping the unique parts you can build up the stairs again like they were. This way, you not only save time but the uv’s will overlap perfectly as well. I use this technique in 3ds max all the time and I wondered if this could be applied to blender as well.
I admit, I have not been on this webpage in a long time… however it was another joy to see It is such an important topic and ignored by so many, even professionals. I thank you to help making people more aware of possible issues.
Great stuff as usual…
That was awesome. Took 2 days to watch, but learned a bunch and wouldn’t have you do it any other way. I agree, watching the entire process was much more beneficial than a timelapse. Loved the blow by blow as well as your thought process. Very thorough. Kudos.
Can you clarify what ‘Average Islands Scale’ means. Didn’t really get that.
The Average Island Scale makes Blender scale each of the UV sections relevant to each other so the mapped image is the same size on all faces.
Thanks and thanks again.
Great tutorial!
Very nice Tut!
When can we expect part 2 though??
Thanks!!
For your file set up for this tutorial, I’m wondering how you converted the repeated elements, e.g. the windows, to an array. Is there a way to do this that doesn’t involve (1) deleting all the copies, (2) creating new copies via an array, and then (3) placing the new array copies in their positions? It seems pointless to have to remove and replace the objects when they are already in the correct location, but I don’t see how else to do it. Thanks.
I finally got around to watching the whole video, I’ve seen a lot of different tutorials (mostly on youtube) and this by far has been the most useful one I’ve seen. There are plenty of tutorials where you have to watch close to try and catch the little things being done, you explain everything you are doing. After watching this, my understanding of UV unwrapping has increased at least 10x.
Amazing tutorial! Thank you for taking the time to do this!
Bah, I’m trying to learn how to do this for my UDK created map.. I’m a noob and all I want to do is model a house and walls but this is becoming way to overwhelming like I need a heavy daily dose of Ritalin and peep talks to actually be productive and complete this sucessfully.. D:
Dude, the last thing you want is Ritalin. Take it from me, try and get a doctor who will prescribe you with concerta. It does help.
Is Part 2 of this ever going to be published, been waiting ages now.
This is an amazingly helpful tutorial, I would love to see part 2, any plans ?
Great Tutorial!
But I wonder where part 2 is?
While unwrapping, would it not be better to hit U then F6 and change the unwrap method from Angle Based to Conformal? That seams to strighten out most hard edge stuff out for me. Or is there a reason we shouldn’t do that?
This like the Female Modeling series is an eye opener.
Can it be done more efficiently as described by Paul Van Der Laan on Apr 16, 2010 at 5:49 pm. If so, may be an updated UV unwrapping a builing tut is in order.
It’s been over a year now, so I’m guessing there wont be a Part 2 to finish this one?
Was rather hoping to learn some tips, tricks, and techniques regarding this circumstance.
Thanks anyway guys! Love y’all!
Hi is there any way to buy this video ?
I cannot watch it here on cgcookie or by right clicking and view on on Vimeo page.
On cgcookie = blank
On on Vimeo page only 4 seconds then stops.
Hi Colin,
If you signup for our Citizen membership, which is just $10/month then you can download the source files and original HD video of the tutorial.
You can signup here: http://cgcookie.com/membership
-Jonathan
Citizen member, you may have missed my comment.
The winzip file for the video shows corrupt and does not play all the way through.
colpolstudios
Thanks WES, download working now
Love the video took notes
. Will review, I find it much more helpful to note what you say as you do the tut and then do it later on my own than trying to work along while watching the video. I use Blender to develop for second life, and so most of what I learn here is applicable but is there anyway to organize a video series that walks someone at the intermediate level through the construction, unwrapping, texturing, baking, mapping, exporting and then optimizing for say Second Life mesh data. I have been watching the Low-Poly game asset tutorials, but is the practical application in Blender the same for buildings? I love the tuts and I am learning so much THANK YOU 
Hello Great Tutorial!
Where is the Unwrapping a Building PART 02 (follow shortly to unwrap the remaining pieces) ?
Hi Serviteur,
Unfortunately I was never able to get part 02 complete. This was entirely my fault. My preference would be to simply redo the series now, since it’s been quite some time since part 01 was released.
ok !