Not understanding uv-unwrapping

[Ulfnir]

I’m not understanding the goal of uv-unwrapping
the original belt has about 6k faces, unwrapping with these seams in the middle gives 2 round islands with light blue stretching

smart unwrapping gives a lot more islands with less stretching

a low polly model with about 100 faces using the decimator makes all these triangles unwrapping with the seams in the middle gives me this mess with green stretching

smart uv unwrapping less stretching but a lot more islands

So what’s the goal here? less islands or less stretching, how would I go about fixing the stretching in the low polly, does the decimate just doesn’t work here?

[RayMobula]

With the current seams you have two tubes.

I suggest you delete the inner faces - the ones that face to the body.

Or, if you want to keep them, add a seam at the bottom of the belt that goes all the way around. This will unwrap the tube into a sheet.

Hope this makes sense.

Ps: the goal is both, fewer faces with a minimum of stretch.

[NP5]

As said the top image just needs a seam marked all round the base or top along the length and it is two halves, rectangular parts.

[RayMobula]

Or like this, with one seem, and no inner faces

Make sure removing the inner faces is the last modification to the belt. Once the object becomes a non-manifold, some modifiers will act up.

[Ulfnir]

thanks for the tips guys, so in my mind the unwrapping is basically to cut open a 3d object into a 2d map, like squatting a tuna can flat, that helped, Its better now but I had some black spots in the cav bake, and the face doesn’t look good with the normals, moving the high polly around fixed the black spots, but still not sure if the low polly normal face should look better or that’s what you can get with the “quick” retopology lowering the mesh and the only way to get something better is doing a manual retopology, or if I should have made better seams, or additional knife cuts, specially in the face, but here is what it looks right now, appreciate feedback, thanks again

[RayMobula]

It’s ike this >>>

[RayMobula]

Getting there. or?

You might want to add seams to the face. Maybe from ear to ear along the mouth.

I broke my oger’s head / face into smaller islands. (yes, I know at one point I screwed up and had the mirror modifier enabled, thus the 1/2 meshes, stacked on top of each other)

In case of the horn. The seam from the tip to the base

results in

Not saying these are perfect, but they worked on the model. If there had been significant artifacts, I might have tweaked it a bit more.

Or, the “cut” in the ear allowed to unwrap it with less stretching.

Just play around and see what you get.