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Creating Multiple UV sets on complex geo
Creating multiple UV sets is usefull when you want to have different UV mapping for color and transparency. Two examples of this would be 1) Leaf color variation across a whole tree (and thus different for each leaf), with transparency for the leaves (and thus the same on each leaf) 2) Color for a bird's feathers derived from the body UVs with a shared map for the transparency for each individual feather.

Let's assume we are working on a Tree: Do the following for each canopy clump and its corresponding leaf cluster:

Method 1: This first method assumes that you already have the UVs setup for your tree canopy

  1. Select a clump of leaves. Open Create UV’s > UV Set Editor and in the box select "map1" and click on "copy." You now have 2 identical UV sets.
  2. Select the corresponding canopy geo, then the leaf clump (the pick order matters) and Mesh > Transfer Attributes. Use default settings and click OK. This will copy the UV’s from the canopy to the UVSet2 of the leaf clump.
  3. Open Windows > Relationship Editors > UV Linking > UV Centric and link the color map to UVSet2 This will allow you to have the leaves get the color from the canopy geo UVs but have the transparency map from their original UVs.
Method 2: This second method assumes that you do not have the UVs setup for your tree canopy.

  1. Make a second UV set: Select a clump of leaves. Open Create UV’s > UV Set Editor and in the box select "map1" and click on "copy." You now have 2 identical UV sets.
  2. Pack these new UVs. Open the UV Texture Editor, switch the new UV set (UV Sets menu) and then Polygons > layout. (This step could alternately be done in Headus for more control with a simple open, edit, pack operation)
  3. Assign them to the color: Open Windows > Relationship Editors > UV Linking > UV Centric and link the color map to UVSet2
  4. Paint a new map: Create the new texture map based on these new UVs and assign it to the color (Try a tile-able pattern first, otherwise you'll need to export a geo with these new UVs to Mudbox)

    5. Along these lines, This script might also be useful.
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