FASTEST AND EASIEST WAY TO UNWRAPPING AND UV MAPPING in MAYA

in this article, I will show you how efficiently UV unwrap an object in a short amount of time with ease in Maya.
we use the soften/harden edges to speed up our UV unwrapping process. every face normal with 45 angles should have harden edges this will help the Maya to create the seams and split the UVS.

we start by going to the mesh display and click on the box soften/harden edges and hit apply.

but because this model is a low poly some edges are sharp like the edges on the cylinder’s shapes and on the other hand some edges are smooth we can fix it manually by selecting the edges hold shift+right click and soften or harden the edges.

after we fix the edges open up the UV editor by holding shift+u. in the editor go to cut/sew and select auto seams checkbox in the auto seams setting select on the cut along hard edges and hit apply. now all the harden edges have seams on it.

now go to face selection and hold shift+right click and unfold the UVs and hold shift+right click again and layout the UVs. now some cylinder shape UV shells need to be straightened and flat because cylindrical polygons need an edge seam to unfold properly and we don’t have any seam on the edges so we cut the edges by going to edges election and select the edges on the cylinder and hold shift+right click and cut.

once more unfold and layout UVs and our object is unwrapped.

cheers 😉