UVs Are My Anti-Happiness

So I think this blog is aptly named. not only is it half-superhero monologue, half-3D modeling practice,but I feel as though I'm simply just flailing about in Maya-- to an extraneous amount. So, Superflail.

Not that anybody wants to know even more about what I'm not capable of creating in Maya, but I'm going to cover how I failed at simply texturing this wagon:


                                   

 It's a lovely wagon, isn't it? Too bad the wire mesh tool isn't given it's own section in the book. Otherwise this proper example of a mesh wouldn't look like it was starting to be stretched out by a black hole's event horizon. Here's the book's example:

 

And below is what I had in class. Mind you, I did try to fix it, but the tools aren't exactly intuitive or easy to use, and I wasn't really able to scale it properly. as I recall, many of us had trouble doing just this part:

 [Lolwat.]

Now, while I did learn a bit about UVs at the time, none of that information stuck because I was distracted by trying to make my crudely-drawn white stripe adhere properly to the side of the wagon. Unfortunately, I was never able to get it right and I had to move on to other work. when I revisited it today, I had to reapply the shape from scratch, leading to this: 

Note the tiny white specks near the front of each side. Yeah, I was able to apply the mesh again, but it had forgotten how to orient the image I was applying to it, so even less of the texture shows. for the record, here's what the book asked me to create in Photoshop:

Beautiful.

Yes, you read that right: Not only does this book miss loads of steps throughout, but it also assumes you have access with at least Adobe Photoshop. If using a legitimate, legal copy (for the record, I have the CS6 Master's Collection) of Photoshop, the cost of entry for this tutorial book just skyrocketed exponentially, even though the purpose here is to learn 3D Modeling techniques in Maya, not creating the textures themselves. A person who could only afford Maya and this tutorial book would then be screwed unless they hunted down an open-source software capable of the same mechanics. A bit of a tangent, but it's an issue I have with this text on principle.

Anyway, I filled in the lines as best as I could when using the transparent wire mesh I'd created. When I input it into Maya, however, it was skewed and did not line up well at all. when I had to re-apply the texture, it lined up even less. From this, I learned a few things:

1. When texturing a mesh, you have to be 100% exact.

D. Whenever a work uses external files, it's often best to work in one long session rather than stopping for a while and returning later-- otherwise, Maya will troll.

~. Never trust the book and iterate the save both before and after doing anything.

XI: Document everything via screen shots.

I did learn a bit about UVs, but I'm more confused by them than anything and I'm starting to think that 3D modeling just isn't my strong suit.