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Don't think there's a way to do that. The UV editor is munch underdeveloped compared to the other editors, sadly.
+ve values add thickness one way (e.g. up) and -ve values add them in the opposide way (e.g. down). Same with Extrude. Seems natural to me, yesno? Of course sometimes it's a bit of a guess which way it's going to go - probably helps if you know which way the normal is facing.
Thankfully, it turns out that as long as I move one tile into ROUGHLY the right place, with no overlap, it will 'snap' into place when I use it elsewhere. It's tricky, though, because there are no guides past the first tile and it's SO slow to drag that many vertices.
Still, it beats the 'not having absolutely any other way to do it.'
Would it help to select those vertices and create a seperate shading domain,. which allows you to deal with that area on it's own.
Sometimes it's much easier to "Simplify" the process of UV mapping by creating shading domain, which can be UVMapped using simpler mapping types,.
rather than choosing to UnWrap a complex model and do it all in one go.
UDIM and PTex can produce texture maps which look like random coloured blocks,. those are obviously less useful to artists who want to edit or add details to those images in a convetional photo editing method.
not all 3D software supports Ptex or UDim
UVW mapping is supported by all 3D applications,. It makes sense to stick with that for maximum compatibility, and simplicity.
Tim, Thanks! Yes that does seems natural... it perhaps explains my conundrum since I've never checked normal directions on any template which I usually design in the left view... they will sometimes extrude forward and sometimes backwards which AFAIK doesn't matter since they usually extrude using Add Thickness in the same direction both times when using a positive number... never tried a negative number twice. Thanks for mentioning Normals which is part or all of the problem I had... what happened on my 2nd extrude was due to needing to Reverse Normals in order to work right the 2nd time I added thickness. Kewl... I now know what to look for when experimenting next time this happens.
I'm thinking that when you say "+ve" that the "ve" stands for vertex editor??. If I'm wrong let me know... no need to if I'm right.
BTW: I'm putting together a Mini-Tutorial to explain how to to create a particular object and further introduce some folks to some of the tool icons and menu items, not you of course, to the Vertex Modeler Room... by asking questions I'm trying to cut down on explanations, less words and pics... edit - edit - and more editing to do.
3DAGE: There are some very useful programs which do NOT use UVW mapping, which is the problem I'm running into. ;) Like Mudbox, which is an amazing modeler.
Also, I'm focusing on texturing and modifying existing models, which limits me; if I were totally making something from scratch, I'd have considerable more freedom to get around most of these issues.
The vertices are already in separate shading domains, which is why it's even possible to do what I'm trying to do. And why it's necessary -- if everything fit on one tile without overlap, well, that would be easy.
But when using Genesis figures or other stuff, well...
So what I've been doing is unselecting 'show all' so I get only one shade group (like 'head'), selecting and dragging it to roughly where a second grid... should be.
And it works, though occasionally I miss and it gets messed up.
+ve = positive -ve = negative (standard abbreviations since way before the interweb)
Feliz Mil - or rather - Happy One Thousand to Modeling Objects in Carrara!
A thousand Thanks to Everyone for all your great Questions and Answers. Never did I think this thread would grow as large or quickly as it has.
In my quest to learn the Vertex Model Room tools and functions I appreciate all the help from excellent modelers like PhilW, 3DAGE, TangoAlpha, MDO and... and all the others. I'd list everyone but would likely, no surely, forget someone... besides the list would be very long.
Folks asking questions have also helped myself and others as well. A big thanks to them.
If you have a any kind of question just ask. Why struggle on your own?... I did for too long trying to learn without help from others who are in the know.
Always remember there is no such thing as a stupid question... instead it is a need or wish to find answers.
Modeling is Funnnnn!
Crazy John's Objects - A Gearlike object: This is so easy to do... it's likely that everyone has made at least one.
After making the gear rather quickly I fugured that it might be good to show the steps involved. It took quite awhile to put them together... there are only 8 things I did. Please excuse me for mentiong things already explained earlier. Oh... I also made a shader specific to this simple little project.
This covers:
[edit] It is very easy to modify objects afterwards if something does'nt work out. By saving my templates at various stages I can also modify one of those to start a new version of an object. Note: pay no attention to my reffering to the object in picks as "Gear4...". this refers to how many times I stopped and started for the mini tutorial. [end edit]
I'm headed off to create this gear thing again for another project... it will be much different.
Feel free to let me know if you notice something wrong... I can easily make changes... even if just spelling.
Crazy John's Objects - A Gear: My first attempt earlier this week... needs some work.
Here's a gear I did years ago.
The only thing that I would be tempted to do with your gear is to Crease some of the edges - you could crease all of them for a very angular look, or leave some uncreased for a more worn look. You could also put a slight bevel on the sharp edges to give a nice look. But great tutorial, well presented!
Thanks for the tutorial. I like how you have included the explanations in the screencaps so that the images can be downloaded and saved independently of the forum links.
McGiver, Now that's more what I was shooting for when I designed the one in my last render, the gold gears.
Phil, I used Extract around and Extract Along to keep it a bit sharp, to sharp IMO, on my gold shaded gear... unfortunately I kept it a bit tight too tight. I also noticed that it's center shows the poly joins so it's far from perfect. I'm going to start over with more teeth and use looser close lines... might even use Fillet for smoother, rounded, edges. Thanks for the compliment on the tutorial, I bow to a master,... little did I realize that it would take so many pics to describe what I did in only a few minutes.
Diomede, Great glad you like that I did that... I had started by writing down the instructions to include in the post... it got to be so much explanation I decided to instead include all of it in the pics... that helped as they are small and caused me to edit explanations. Note that I have gotten into the habit of saving both a version with layers that I can later if needed change or add/subtract from... as well as a .png with merged layers. I've also gotten into the habit of saving a separate screen grab for just the tools dropdowns and menus to incorporate in it or anywhere in the future.
Have to say I missed the gold gears - yes, they look more what I had in mind, very nice!
Thanks, I thought it looked decent until I rendered and noticed the center... also the white lines on some edges but they are either from the light source or Highlight and/or Shininess settings for shader... the gold shader comes with Carrara located in it's Metals catagory, me thinks. I'm thinking that any PA Shaders, Objects, Scenes etc, use their own catagories... but as always might be wrong.
Gold gears... had to chuckle... thought it read Gold Years
Hey if I'm in my gold years then why does my hair get greyer... guess I'm getting into my Grey Years. 
...and I'm getting to my Bald Years!
HI Will :)
Technically all programs use UV's to display a "surface" on the mesh, even if that's a basic UV and basic flat colour,. however,..
I get what you're saying about modelling tools which don't automatically create UV's until you're texturing,. like Z-Brush, 3D Coat etc.. which allow freeform modelling and mesh rebuilding on the fly, so there's no point in having fixed UV's at that stage.
But,. with Genesis,. this model is already UV mapped and has shading domains split to allow easy texturing, either by painting onto the model ,or using an image editor like photoshop to create texture maps.
If you examine the texture maps which come with genesis or any other premade figure,. you'll see that there's a texture map for each Shading domain.
It sounds like you're trying to fit all of these domains into the UV area,. to create a single UV area / Texture map.
that's not a great idea.
forcing every domain onto a single texture area, reduces the available texturing space for all of the mesh
The resolution of the details would be lower since there is less space,.
Although working with some premade models can seem limiting,. those "limits" only apply if you're planning on selling or redistributing stuff.
if it's for you're own use,. or fun, or "learning" ,. the only limit is imagination.
Andy :)
I've posted shader settings for the CarrarArtist logo along with a zip of the shader, scene(.car) in Shader Creating & Settings for Carrara - Q&A - Come One, Come All in My Post there. Still want to make a change to the logo model so it is in WIP stage at the moment. Here is what Enhance: C Fractal X Flame looks like so far... want to go back a tweek the shader a bit more. Excuse all the copies... I wanted to see what it looked like at different angles.
Crazy John's Objects - CarrarArtist Logo - A new beginning: Does size really matter? Depends.
This shows my new template from the start, surprise - surprise, I liked the earlier design, shown above. Still wasn't happy with the tilt of the C. Below shows the early design of the original after it's being modified.
Size Does Matter! In the 2nd pic you will notice that logo is quite large. See the pic where a few ways to re-size are briefly explained and highlighted. Note that as is the logo needs to be drastically reduced in size in a scene... This is especially important when it is included with another object that is either larger or smaller. As you can see from in the pic the logo is quite wider and also taller than a human figure.
What size should I make an object? This can be a bit confusing. The size is up to you and where/how the object is to be used. Note that you can always scale it in the Assemble room or even better do this in the Vertex modeler. If done in the latter then your object should load into the Assemble room at 100% and can be resized from there either +/-. TangoAlpha mentioned awhile back that 1 grid square in the Vertex Room is equal to 1 foot... I believe he was referring to a Medium Scene. A method to my madness is to just add a cube which is 1ft square.. dupe it x many times and stack them up so as not to exceed whatever your aim for size is. Later you can display tinnier grid squares by reducing the number of squares to appear for the grid Spacing... Normally I leave other settings as is. Note you can choose the Grid request from View/Menu or via Ctrl+J.
Now Wait just a second! I just realized that my setting for the grid is at .25 ft... what's up with there being 5 divisions between the fatter grid lines... shouldn't there be 4 divisions... that would equal 1 ft. See 3rd pic for Grid requester... this shows a 1 ft square cube inside one of the wide grid squares. Want to get even more confused??... just change the grid to various sizes. Smaller Spacing will give you both more squares wide and skinny lines... they appear not to have nothing to do with object size unless you are using the default grid size of 1 foot. Now I'm a bit confused... as earlier choosing Construct/Insert 3D and specifying 1 ft square or another size is to use as a guide is the only way I know of being sure to get things in the correct size. If anyone has a better method... please let me know.
Feel free to let me know if you notice something wrong... I can easily make changes... even if just spelling.
Would it look better if the slant of the 'A' was the same as the slant of the 'C'? (or vice versa) At least it would be symmetrical. just a thought.
Tim, you're entirely correct! I did give it more slant but not enough for my eye. I'm thinking about moving the lower left corners, inner and outer, of the C to have more slant. I just now check the slant with a later version of the original and while it is slanted a tiny bit more... I'm wanting even more though since that bothered me in the final... gotta get it slanted much more. I do have more slant on the top right end of the C which is much more than the original model... that part works much better... thanks for pointing that out.
Been also thinking of incorporating somehow a paint bush and pallet with mixed colors... will have to give this some more thought... hmm perhaps part of a base... dunno yet... or separate prop(s). Similar but better than the one below.
Crazy John's Objects - CarrarArtist Logo - template ver6: Modified that template even more... has much better slant than before to both sides.
See pics below. Please let me know if you agree with changes or if I need other changes... I feel it's ready, or very close to proceed with modeling.
That's looking good
The CarrarArtist Logo - Yet a new concept design: This is the smoothing design. Before I added a few extra polylines to tighten it up it was first checked with smoothing... lo and behold the the bottom inside of the A is now curved giving it a bit of an artistic look, IMO. And yet I still have a bit of touch up here and there... the non-curved version is only a few steps away... both it and this one have a bit of touch up to do... couldn't resist showing this new look which caught me by surprise.
Other changes made were giving the C a lot more tilt that I thought it lacked enough of. Hugh thanks to TangoAlpha for the input and confirming this. Another change was to widen the bottom of the A to add a small touch of flair at it's base. Then onto the shader settings for Enhance C: Fractal/X Flame by DCG to which I made quite a few changes... I wanted a light and dark goldish mix as well as some blending.
I also thank Misty for planting the idea of the suggesting the logo by suggesting "CarrarArtist". I''m still hoping to get time to make one in Typtool3 as a font that can be loaded into Carrara or any program as well as chars for "CarrarArtist" so Folks can use them for their Artwork anywhere including Carrara Challenges.
Fun Fact: Crazy John saved more than 8 versions of the this design of the template for the logo... gotta always be able to back up and make changes.
Tip: A simple mistake I made in the original, the template, was overlooking 2 vertices that needed to be welded. I found out where it was made when adding smoothing to the object... this created an N-Gon. Always be sure to view objects from all sides... rotating to check them all.
Critique and suggestions are always welcome.
looking pretty cool
Thank you O' great and mighty Supweme Wuler... hopefull now I can get something together for the Carrara CHALLENGE - Tomatoes et al #33 WiP Now Open before I miss out.
The CarrarArtist Logo - Final concept design: Now I have 2 verstions... one for using smoothing and yet another with NONE... latter I call the hard version. Note that the same shader is used for both versions and looks quite different on each.
Modifications:
[edit - update 5-23-17]
Images below are smaller than actual renders... click to open in new tab.
Crazy John's Objects - A Lampshade: Using Double Sweep.
I must first thank PhilW for introducing me to Double Sweep which opens up all sorts of possibilities.
I have outlined PhilW's instructions placing them all in one screen pic. The next pic is simply the final result... I did get carried away and added 7 shader domains.
[Edit - Possibilities Addition] - For a few examples of the infinite possibilities go back to PhilW's earlier responses... they are Here. Note that my example is very simple... you can vary the path to be swept as well as the design of the shape to create. For an example change the circle to an odd shaped path... round sides with somewhat flat sides... then change the upright lines to have curves and also touch, meet,... at the top ends... these can be anywhere with many variations between the them and their bottoms. Let your creative imagination wander!
Thanks John. I would probably have started with a cylinder and scaled it with soft select. But then it would have had the wrong profile because we can't control the falloff and I'd have spent a good hour tweaking it. Your way is a lot easier! (so many tools that I keep forgetting about . . .)