Figure 171. Surface Import

Surface importing uses the same Scale and Rot controls that surface exporting uses, with one difference. You can see by comparing Figure 171 with Figure 170 that the unit and axis choices are the same, but the field values are inverted. This is on purpose; a surface that's exported as cm and scaled down by 0.1 needs to be scaled back up by 10 when imported back in.

Imported NURBS Surfaces

Each patch of an imported NURBS surface can be picked using the usual Texture Maps tools, and mapping properties assigned. The global All Type, All Size and All Err buttons can also be used to assign default parameters.

Once map properties are assigned, texture maps can be generated as per usual.

Note: If you want to preserve the imported surface's mapping properties, you can save it out to a SLICE file.

Imported SUBD Surfaces

An imported SUBD surface is represented by a single patch. All texture map properties should be assigned to this patch, and as with the imported NURBS surface, maps are rendered out in the usual way.

Unlike imported NURBS surfaces, imported SUBD surface can be edited to some degree. You can't add or remove faces, or change the connectivity of existing faces at all, but you can move the vertexes.

Figure 172. Editable Imported SUBD Surface

When an imported SUBD surface is loaded, the Patches panel Rebuild button changes to Editable. If you click on this, then every vertex in the surface is given a shape point (see Figure 172); these points can be moved over the polymesh to change the shape of the SUBD surface.

Note: As with imported NURBS surfaces, if you want to preserve the imported SUBD surface's mapping properties, you can save it out to a SLICE file.

Copying SUBD UVs

With imported SUBD surfaces you have the option to copy UVs from another polymesh.

Note: This tool is still in development, and at the moment it can only deal with simple UV mappings like cylindrical projections. If there are UV seams throughout the source surface, odd results will be produced.

Figure 173. Copy UVs Options

What you do is:

(1)

Load the UV source polymesh into CySlice as the Mesh object. For now, UVs can only be copied from PLY files. If you want to copy UVs from OBJ formatted files, use Mtool to first convert them into PLY. Its OK to Skip the loading of the color map.

(2)

Import the destination SUBD surface into CySlice (see "Importing Surfaces" above). The source and destination polymeshes need to be perfectly aligned (i.e. the same size, position and orientation); if the imported SUBD surface doesn't lie on top of the source polymesh you'll need to modify the surface import Scale and Rot options until they are aligned.

(3)

Click on the Copy UVs button towards the bottom of the Networks Texture Maps panel.

(4)

A file selection dialog appears, along with the Copy UVs Options window (see Figure 173). If the polymesh you are copying from is the control hull for another SUBD surface, select SUBD, otherwise leave it on the default of Poly.

(5)

Select and Open the PLY file you want to copy the UVs from. This can be any PLY file, but is normally the same PLY file that you loaded as the Mesh object in step (1).

Once the UVs are copied, you can use the View UVs button to check the results. See Eg 5: UV Mapped Meshes for one example of the use of this tool.