headus 3D tools

[SuperSheep]

I have a few questions;

How can I get a set of UV shells to pack within the 0-1 space ? At present, all or most of my UV shells are being placed in their own UV tile.

What is the LMB Pick option ? I don't quite understand what is being said in the manual ?

Are function keys saved when quitting and restarting UV Layout ? From what I've experienced, yes. I just want to verify ?

Thank You

[headus]

"At present, all or most of my UV shells are being placed in their own UV tile."

Check which options you have ticked in the Pack panel. In particular, make sure you have "Dont Resize Shells" and "Lock All To Tile" turned off.

"What is the LMB Pick option ? I don't quite understand what is being said in the manual ? "

Some operations (like the Optimize All) can be made to work only on some shells if you pick them first. So the way to pick them is using the left mouse button (LMB), and under the Edit Preferences you can control whether that picking works in a similar way to Maya, Max or original UVLayout flavor.

"Are function keys saved when quitting and restarting UV Layout"

Yes! I personally have F1 mapped to the Optimize "Run For" button, so I can LMB pick a shell or two and just tap F1 to get them flattened quickly.

Phil

[SuperSheep]

Thank you for answering the questions.

I like the hotkeys too, I wish there were a few more You know what would explode UV Layout (explode for the positive ). For those that sometimes use pTex if you could control how pTex would be translated to UV islands.

[headus]

Can you show a pic of what you're after? I sort of know what ptex is, but not how UVLayout could help.

Phil

[SuperSheep]

As you probably are aware, Ptex requires no UV's. UV Layout could intelligently convert an object that has Ptex into multiple clean islands if the user needs more control. I can't show any screen shots, I could only describe.

UV Layout reversing an object into a object with UV islands, that would make UV layout one intelligent program, the only catch is, if it's possible and how much work it would be for you. If you do decide I'm sending a open invitation that I'd like to beta test it You probably get alot of request for that, everyone wants to beta test

[oesponda]

The main problem about ptex is that each face has its own resolution, depending on the needs. Basically it's something similar to one shell per face, and depending on the needs of the user, each face (shell) is scaled to give it more resolution.

Don't know the format specifications, but I would say is not trivial to convert a ptex texture file to a uv mapped one.

[SuperSheep]

[headus]

"would say is not trivial to convert a ptex texture file to a uv mapped one."

There's no automatic conversion, but what would be possible I think is to add something to the Repaint tool. If you have a ptex mesh, you'd be able to load that into UVLayout to make UVs like you normally would, then repaint the ptex texture to make a normal UV map.

Phil

[oesponda]

Right. I was thinking on the benefits of ptex (per face resolution) and the implications of baking that to a normal uv: detail in faces with higher resolution would be lost.... unless you could (somehow) keep a relation between the face resolution in the ptex files and the local scale of those faces when unwrapping... (!) Now, that would be reeeeaaally cool and very useful for nonlinear workflows: Texturing artist would be able to start painting as soon as the model is ready, and at a later stage take care of the uvs if they are actually needed.

Anyway, just random thoughts.

[headus]

"keep a relation between the face resolution in the ptex files and the local scale of those faces when unwrapping"

You're a genius! That could actually work, and as long as I can work out how to read ptex files, setting up the local scales for the flattening would be easy.

Phil

[SuperSheep]

That's how you would translate PTex to UV's