Good UVW Map-making guide for Maya?

Unless there's a way to teach Maya to use the template as the UVW map? I've used 3ds for a long time but
A: I'm not very good
B: I just got Maya

so I'm lost in a sea of "huh?"

Download the avatar models from the downloads section of this site. Open up the OBJ's in Maya. They'll already be UV mapped.

To apply the template to the model, right click and hold on the body part you want to affect, and then in the menu that pops up, navigate to Material -> Assign New Material -> Lambert. When the material is applied, the attribute editor will automatically open so you can adjust the attributes for the new material. Click on the little checkerboard button to the far right of the word "Color". The "Create Render Node" window will open. By default, you should be on the textures tab, but if not, click on that tab now. Under "2D textures", click on the word "File". The "Create Render Node" window will close, and the attribute editor will change from displaying the options for the material to displaying the options for the file. Where it says Image Name, click on the folder icon, navigate to wherever you've got your template saved, and open the file.

Depending on your settings, you may or may not be able to see the texture on the model at this point. It's there either way, but to see it, you have to tell Maya you want textures displayed. Maya can do so much, you have to be pretty specific with telling it exactly what to do. There are plenty of circumstances where you might not want to see textures displayed while you're working and plenty of other situations where you would. Maya doesn't know what kind of situation this particular one is until you tell it.

Here's how to tell Maya to show you textures. At the top of each viewer pane (by default you'll be in the perspective pane, unless you changed it) is a white menu bar. On that bar (not on the main menu bar at the top of the screen) click on the word "Shading". On the shading menu, make sure "Smooth Shade All" is checked. This will turn on surface shading and get you out of wireframe view, which is what you would have been in by default. Now click "Shading" again and check "Hardware Texturing". This tells Maya to send textures to your graphics card to be displayed on your screen.

Note that the method I outlined for applying the texture is VERY basic, and it's certainly not the only way to go about it. In Maya there are bout six million different ways to do anything. I'd highly recommend you go through the tutorials in the help menu. Maya comes with the best help files I've ever seen. If you're serious about using it, you should go through all the lessons, but just so you know, the ones that will be of particular use to you for getting started with using Maya as a tool for SL texturing are Introduction, Maya Basics, Rendering, and Painting. The other lessons are great too, and they're difinitely need-to-know information if you're going to be a Maya user, but they're not really applicable for SL related use.

Good luck and have fun with it. Maya is awesome.

uhh maybe I'm doing something wrong, when I import the OBJ file it turns all the body parts into one object

Incidentally, deep and personal thanks for taking the time to write that all yourself!

The error reads, specifically,

"Your OBJ file contains faces shared by multiple groups.
Maya cannot create multiple objects for this file.
A single mesh object will be created instead.
The OBJ group information will be captured in Maya sets."

It's been a while since I've checked to see if the downloads have changed, but assuming you've got the same files I do, the simplest answer for now is to use the file called SL_avatar_OBJ.obj. The other two, SL_Female.obj and SL_Male.obj, are kind of messed up. They can be fixed, but unfortunately I'm way too tired right now to talk about how.

yeah, my insomnia is not conducive to technical help, thanks for everything!

Hi, I'm a SL newbie. Only started playing yesterday, but I've had quite some experience in the past with skinning. I used this thread as a starting point for getting the meshes and textures into Maya and thought I'd add a couple of tips.

Everything said above is true except when the Obj file is imported it is broken into many parts, yet the UV's are connected in some weird way. I'd select part of a leg, apply a texture and it would appear on the chest and arm. So I'd try and apply the correct texture to the arm and the leg would change.

I found the easiest way to solve this was to select all the appropriate upper body parts, cut them, then paste them. It broke the UV connections into the legs and allowed me to apply the textures properly. I haven't done much further work on this yet, but being a newbie myself I'd be happy to share my findings (as I find them) in game if you are interested. Just IM me and we can help each other out as we go along.

I usually use deep paint 3d. it will allow for importing of .obj files and adding a your clothing/tat texture to preview is fairly streamlined.