headus 3D tools

[TwoSheds]

Hiya,

I recently upgraded to UV Layout Pro 2.08 from 2.06.
The former "Update" button is gone now and I'm just wondering how to transfer my new UVs to an older mesh, or if it's even possible anymore.

The manual seems to be saying all you can do now is save out the obj file, not update an existing one with new UVs.

The reason I want to do it this way is because I have a mesh that has parts not welded together, however in UV Layout I'm using a welded version so as to be able to take advantage of symmetry and UV the figure in larger pieces.

So I hope to be able to transfer the UVs to the unwelded version. Not sure how that's going to work out anyway, but I'm hoping I have the option to be able to try at least.

Thanks for any help.

[GeoffRiley]

The action of the old 'Update' button is now (basically) the standard action of the 'OBJ save' button.

Check out Phils update release post at http://www.headus.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1122.

[TwoSheds]

[headus]

Interesting, I never thought that the Update button could have been used to transfer UVs like that. Unfortunately the Update has been removed because it confused most users that the Save didn't transfer their materials etc, so both buttons got amalgamated. I'll look at putting the Update back somewhere though ... not on the first row, but maybe in the Edit panel.

If you're prepared to use a text editor though, there is a work-around. Save your flattened out mesh to a UVL file, then load that up in your favorite text editor. Search for "uvl_obj_v1", which should be roughly half way down. Delete all of that line and everything between and including the following curly braces; that should basically be everything from the "object uvl_obj_v1" line to the end of the file. Save the UVL file back out, then load that back into UVLayout. You should then see the Update button magically re-appear!

So what you just did was deleted a copy of the original OBJ file out of the UVL, so when you load that back in, UVLayout doesn't know all of the material info etc; it knows you're going to need the Update then, so shows it again. This was done for back-wards compatibility with old UVL files (i.e. those saved using pre-2.08 versions of UVLayout).

Phil

[TwoSheds]

Hiya Phil,

Really? I thought that's *mostly* what the update button was for.
At least I always saw it as a dual-purpose tool - for getting both your poly groups and new UVs into the same OBJ file. I used it quite a bit, actually.

I didn't even notice it was missing until I went to try it out, and then that's when I first discovered in the manual that "Save" is now saving all the group information. Yes, I do read the manual occasionally.
And BTW, I'm rally glad you made it where it saves all the poly group info.

It would be cool if you could put that button back in, yes, but to be honest it would be even better if you made a tool to simply transfer the UVs from one mesh to another. I don't know if you're familiar with Autodesk Mudbox, but it has a tool for doing that and it works great. Unfortunately it reorders the vertices, which is not a good idea and the reason I can't use Mudbox for this.
I could do it with GATOR (General Attribute Transfer Operator) in Softimage, but Softimage renames all the OBJ groups with its own naming convention, and I'd have to spend an hour afterward renaming all the groups to what I want them to be.

But it would be great to have a Transfer UVs tool in UV Layout, just something that reads the UV information in one OBJ file and transfers it to another OBJ file, provided they have the same topology.

Thank you for the instructions on how to get the Update button back - I'm definitely going to try that in the meantime!
I'll let you know how it works out after I get a chance to try it.