Unwrapping
Decision-making for unwrapping has taken a lot of thought I usually wouldn't need to consider. As this is my most ambitious, complex model yet, I felt I needed to use UDIMs whereas former projects only really necessitated individual textures.
I think it would be good to organize the body into one UDIM, and the cape into another. My reasoning is that the cape is so huge -- and also multilayered -- that it would take too much UV space unless they are given their own texture.
I mirrored UVs in the sections isolated by selection. Normally I not mirror the face as it's an important focus typically -- faces just a focal point, it's psychology so perfect symmetry can feel unnatural. Anakin also has a prominent scar on his right eye, so symmetry normally wouldn't be advised.
However, the other half of the face is extremely hidden. It's hard to see without an extremely close, slightly-unflattering close-up. So halving the texture space is less important here.
Additionally, I managed to straighten a lot of elements, at least where it doesn't skew the textures too much. The legs are unwrapped in perfect rectangles, and the chest has the line of symmetry perfectly flat too, which makes it easier to organize and lessen the needed padding.
Another important note is that I scaled the head about 1.5x -- again, the face tends to draw the eye, so It's where you concentrate detail.
After unwrapping everything, organizing it and laying everything out, the results are a bit disappointing. Main thing is that the scale of all the UV islands are plainly too small. I packed everything the best I could, but all the overlapping layers means I have way more shells than usual. Particularly, the head being exposed on top of having a helmet on top meant the needed UV space required to texture that area is functionally doubled.
So because of this, I decided I would move the head and helmet to their own UV layouts, so everything would have enough texel density.
I reshuffled the UVs, and it's looking a lot better in terms of density.
It's a shame to me, I couldn't fit it down to 2, especially when my first caped character, my elf I made in 2024 didn't even need UDIMs to look passable. This model is more complex and deserves it more, but I have a nagging feeling I could have done better in terms of efficiency even still, I'm just unsure how without more feedback.