headus 3D tools

headus · Last edited by headus on Thu Oct 11, 2007 7:36 pm; edited 1 time in total

Hello All,

The UVLayout Beta v1.22 is now available from ...

http://www.uvlayout.com/try/

New features added in this version:

- Packing: Shells can be packed tight to minimize empty texture space. They
can also be grouped into boxes before packing to keep them together.

There's a couple of new "Packing" videos, on the uvlayout.com/videos page,
that shows the new shell packing tool in use. If you have a license already,
just grab and install the software. If you don't have a license, please fill in the
form on the download page to get your 30day temp license. This is your last
chance to get one of these fully functional beta licenses!

Phil

moochie · Posts: 105 Joined: 13 Jul 2006

Wow .. that looks fantastic! I've got some mapping to do this w/e, so I'll be able to give the new version a real try out. Thank you, Phil.

headus · Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 5:25 pm Post subject:

As always, don't hold back if you think something can be improved. I was wondering if a gravity setting of some sort would be useful ... at the moment the packing fills from the bottom left corner, but it might be handy to be able to selectively push some shells/boxes to other corners.

Phil

Locke · Posts: 18 Joined: 31 Jan 2006

headus · Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 9:32 pm Post subject:

Ahhh, yes, I sort of forgot (ok, decided to ignore :-) that the packing and stacking tools don't play nicely together. At the moment if you stack things on top of each other, the packing will pull them apart again. The work-around would be lock all but one of the matching shapes, pack, then unlock and stack. But then if you re-pack you lose all of that.

I'll will think about this ... probably what it needs to do is remember the stacking relationships (with an option for user specified offsets like U+1), and take those into account when packing.

Phil

EnigmaMachine · Posts: 13 Joined: 11 Aug 2005 Location: Virginia, USA

Nice update!

I wonder if an Auto-Rotate Shells for best fit option would make sense?

In the following example, by default there's significant wasted space.

However if I manually rotate one of the shells and then run the Pack All command, it results in a much more efficient use of space.

In a more complex scenario, this could potentially be quite a time saver. I'd imagine it would be best if the fewest auto-rotations were made that resulted in more efficient packing. (To clarify: I mean 90º and 180º rotations, rather than arbitrary rotations.)

As you noted above, the Stacking relationships should be factored in as well.

Thanks

headus · Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2007 6:13 pm Post subject:

"I wonder if an Auto-Rotate Shells for best fit option would make sense?"

It would make lots of sense, and was what the original requester for the packing tool asked for too. My concern is that in cases where there's lots of shells the packing is slow already, and thats only going to make it worse. Anyway, I will give it a go sometime!

Phil