Dividing the mesh

When working with UVs, it is useful to divide the workspace so you can see both the model and the UVs at the same time.

To view the soldier model and its UVs side by side

1. In the panel menu, select Panels > Saved Layouts > Persp/UV Texture Editor.

   The perspective view and UV Texture Editor appear side-by-side in the viewport.

If you select the polygon soldier you will notice that the UVs for the body, arms, and legs are scattered in a pattern that doesn’t resemble the actual model. This isn’t very helpful for painting a texture map.

To simplify the job, you need to divide the mesh into multiple pieces that you can then texture individually. Generally, you want to divide the mesh into pieces that can be unfolded into approximate square or rectangle shapes. This requires some pre-planning.

In this lesson you divide the body mesh into a torso, arms, and legs.

To divide the mesh into pieces

1. In the panel menu select Panels > Orthographic > front.

   The perspective view changes to an orthographic front view of the soldier.

   
2. -click the mesh and select Face from the marking menu.
3. Drag-select the faces on the right arm up to the shoulder.
   

   The drag-select operation also selects the faces on the back of the arm.

   TipSwitch to perspective mode and rotate around the arm to make sure all of its faces are selected. You may want to dolly in on areas like the underarm to make sure your selection only includes faces from the arm. If you find any unselected faces or faces that should not be part of your selection, you can Shift-click to add or remove them.

   
4. Select Mesh > Extract.

   Now if you change the selection mask back to Object, you can select the hand separately from the rest of the body.

5. Repeat steps 2-4 for the following areas (use the pictures as reference for the boundaries of each extraction).

   Extract Point	Example
   Left arm
   Legs

This leaves you with individual meshes for the arms, legs, and chest. The head, feet, and hands have already been done for you. This division allows you to texture each part individually.