headus 3D tools

[WhiteShark]

I didn't know in which sub-forum to put this, but I hope it will work here!

We've been using UVL for a couple of months now and would like to give you guys some feedback and ask some questions:

1.
Sometimes the shells seems to collapse on each other when you bloat them (you press Shift+F, then it happens when you press Space).
This is probably caused by the mesh scale is too small.
We found out that if you scale (make the mesh bigger) in Maya and then export it to UVL the problem is solved.

2.
Undo works fine, but a Redo function would be nice as well, something in future versions perhaps?

3.
When dealing with "heavy" meshes the viewport updates get really slow, only solution now is to split the mesh in smaller pieces.
Is there going to be hardware acceleration support in later versions.

4.
Whenever you use the 4 and 5 button for awhile on your shells and then decide that you're not pleased with the result and then undrop the shell to edit view,
the changes you made to the shell (with 4 and 5 button) does not reset for some reason and this causes problem when you want to start
over with an "untainted" shell (drop it to UV-view and bloat it again).

5.
Sometimes the shells intersect each other, when border edges lies on top of other edges, would it not be nicer if the program priorities the border edges / point when you want to select them (instead of the underlying edges which are usually not garbled).

6.
Is it possible to have a value that tells UVL how much force it should apply when using the brush?
Sometimes it is just too much and the changes happens too fast, would be nice to have, say a slider / button that tells
UVL only to use half the pressure on the brush.

7.
As of version 2.03.02 we still get the "Not detached" error, we solve this by cutting a single edge in the mesh and then drop it to UV-view.

Thanks! (more to come whenever we encounter some issues =)

/WS

[headus]

Thanks for your questions! I'll have a go at answering them next week when I'm officially back at work after a nice long summer holiday :-)

Phil

[WhiteShark]

Ok, no worries =)

Got one more suggestion;

Would be nice to automate the dropping.
If I press D the mesh drops to UVview and automatically starts the bloating process.
This might be good when you have alot of smaller meshes and you want to stay in edit view to get a nice flow.
In the same time (in the background or in another window) UVL takes care of the tedious bloating of all those meshes you drop, later you can check them out and start the tweaking.

Thanks!

[headus]

"Sometimes the shells seems to collapse ... We found out that if you scale (make the mesh bigger) in Maya and then export it to UVL the problem is solved."

I've never seen or heard of that problem before! Can you email me a sample OBJ that collapses in when bloated?

"a Redo function would be nice as well"

Yep, its on the list, but as you can see from the current poll ...

http://www.headus.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=665

... its probably not going to be a top priority in the short term.

" ... with "heavy" meshes the viewport updates get really slow,"

Try using the "H" hotkey to hide the bits of the mesh you aren't currently working on. You can use it either the UV, Ed or 3D views, and it does speed things up a lot.

"the changes you made to the shell (with 4 and 5 button) does not reset for some reason and this causes problem when you want to start
over with an "untainted" shell"

Sounds like a bug! I'll fix that right away and it'll be in the next update. In the meantime, you can paint out the 4/5 weights by holding down 4 and 5 together.

"Sometimes the shells intersect each other, when border edges lies on top of other edges, would it not be nicer if the program priorities the border edges / point when you want to select them (instead of the underlying edges which are usually not garbled)."

The priority at the moment is closest edge to mouse pointer, which I sort of want to keep. If you're having problems picking an edge, try zooming in closer, or use Ctrl-Shift-MMB to separate the edges to make them easier to pick.

"Is it possible to have a value that tells UVL how much force it should apply when using the brush?"

Yep, that wouldn't be too hard. Its on the list!

"As of version 2.03.02 we still get the "Not detached" error, we solve this by cutting a single edge in the mesh and then drop it to UV-view."

OK, thanks! I shall definitely be looking at that one too for the next update.

"Would be nice to automate the dropping."

Hmm, an interesting idea. I'll think about that, because there's situations where you wouldn't want an auto-bloat. Actually, I've been thinking about a "mass bloat" hotkey, so after dropping you can at least bloat a whole lot of shells in one go. It wont be in the background, but at least you dont have to do them one at a time.

Thanks for all the suggestions and bug reports. Keep them coming, but not too many all at once :-)

Phil