Is this a reasonable UV mapping for high poly rock? and how to clean seams after Auto UV

[anicg]

First time I do UV mapping for a rock (was used to manual UV flatten for hard surface objects)

This is a high (very high) poly rock (obviously not for games)

I applied GameDev Auto UV, it has taken a bit more than 10 minutes and I got this:

1- How do I clean the apparently unnecessary seam cuts (in red)?

2- Does it look like a reasonable UV mapping for a rock? are there too many seams? it's meant to go to Substance Painter.

3- should I have applied the UV's when it was low poly? (I have 5 layers of noise, each time I want to add noise I subdivide first)

At the end I added a close up on the mesh (822170 polygons)

[reeson]

If you have a high poly mesh, you do your UVs on a low resolution/poly mesh. You can make a low res. mesh by converting your high res. mesh into VDB, and then convert it back into polygons. I also use GameDev Auto UV, but sadly it doesn't do a good job every time. 

Check out the videos, maybe it will help.

https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/houdini-game-dev-tools-auto-uvs/?collection=48

 

 

Edited February 18, 2019 by reeson

[anicg]

Thanks this has helped a lot: first polyreduce then auto uv.

It's much better but I'm left with some areas with nasty stretching.

How do I relax these in Houdini after the auto UV?

[reeson]

I'm not an UV expert, but I made this quick hip file. Take a look, maybe it will help.

VDB_rock_autoUVs.hip