headus 3D tools

SuperSheep · Posts: 86 Joined: 19 Jun 2012

I thought of another approach to unwrapping hard surfaces in UV layout. If you make a seam on a object UV layout which you then disconnect the seam, then UV layout would unwrap the mesh as though it's a box opening up, without any overlapping UV's, all the while preserving hard edges.

The segment tool is nice but it breaks everything up similar to an atlas UV map, it keeps some parts fairly well, not everything. Another problem with segment is as I hadwith a mesh, too many UV shell boxes, UV layout crashes and corrupts the scene.

GeoffRiley · Posts: 72 Joined: 21 Feb 2007 Location: Cheshire, England

Cutting out the individual boxes sounds like it would work - especially if you were then able to stack those which were to be textured identically. Effectively to would end up with an almost flat wall with lots of holes in, and those holes unfold to basic five sided boxes. Nice plan.

As for running out of shell - you can increase the maximum number of shells in the Preferences on the Load tab.

Kind regards,
Geoff

SuperSheep · Posts: 86 Joined: 19 Jun 2012

GeoffRiley · Posts: 72 Joined: 21 Feb 2007 Location: Cheshire, England

Ah.. the mesh has 'become' broken after one lot of processing? If you can it may be worth hanging on to a copy of that in case Phil wants to take a look at it to see if he can see what went wrong.

Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice said.

Geoff

SuperSheep · Posts: 86 Joined: 19 Jun 2012

GeoffRiley · Posts: 72 Joined: 21 Feb 2007 Location: Cheshire, England

The concerning part is that UVLayout was unable to successfully reload something it had saved - that's what I think Phil might like to take a look at.

As for the segment tool - I must admit I've never tried it yet, so I don't know if I'd be able to make much in the way of useful comments... however, it could well give Phil something to look at when he gets in on Monday morning. Cool

In the meantime, I'll see if I can run up something with enough complexity to just give the segment tool a bash: I have an assignment to work on, but it'll be a nice diversion for a little while later. Laughing

Geoff

SuperSheep · Posts: 86 Joined: 19 Jun 2012

SuperSheep · Posts: 86 Joined: 19 Jun 2012

I've spent roughly 7 hours, on this mesh and it's not finished, and I have one more just like it Sad

Do you think my UV techniques are working, or could I have done this differently and faster ? I'm going to halt on finishing this, in-case there is a better method.

headus · Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2012 5:41 pm Post subject:

Maybe try using the Copy UVs tool. The idea there is that you flatten out one of your block shapes (with the Segment tool and/or with the usual cut and flatten and weld tools), then use the Copy Uvs matching function to find and apply those UVs to all similar block shapes.

One drawback to the Copy UVs tool currently is that all shapes need to be detached. That is, you'd need to go through and detach all your block shapes from the main mesh, being careful that you detach them all at the same edge loop. One thing that's on my list is for the matching tool to optionally find bits of attached geometry that are similar to the already flattened shell. When that's added, you would be able to detach and flatten just one block, then find all matching blocks to copy those UVs to. From the look of your mesh there, you've only got maybe 20 different shapes, so it would be perfect for that. But until that's working, you'll need to detach the different shapes yourself.

Phil