headus 3D tools

[bencowellthomas]

Hi there,

After spending sometime unwrapping (and saving 'tmp' files before each major operation in case of a crash). I was pretty much done but found that I couldn't tag edges on a couple of unwrapped islands, I tried a few things and had a crash.

However now I can't get back into any of my uvl tmp or autosave files and get the 'Mesh Topology too broken to load' warning. I've tried cleaning or setting uv's to new but I'm pretty sure those options have no effect when loading a uvl file.

Have I most likely lost my work or is there another way ?

I've been using the uvpipe to send meshes over from Max, and so just to be sure I manually exported the same starting mesh into UV Layout as an obj to see if uvpipe had suppressed any topology warnings but all seemed fine.

My concern is understanding why this happened and how to prevent it in the future without saving / closing and reopening constantly to ensure that my file hasn't corrupted.

cheers
ben

[headus]

"However now I can't get back into any of my uvl tmp or autosave files and get the 'Mesh Topology too broken to load' warning. I've tried cleaning or setting uv's to new but I'm pretty sure those options have no effect when loading a uvl file."

That's correct, the Clean only kicks in when importing an OBJ, the theory being that once its already loaded and then saved out to UVL, its clean already.

So its sounding like a geometry corruption due to a bug, which is very rare (yours is the first report!), but that doesn't help you of course in this case.

If you are happy to email me a copy of one of your UVL files, I can work out what the corruption is and can get UVLayout to handle that more gracefully when reloading. If that same corruption occurs in the future, you'll then be able to load those saves too.

Phil

[bencowellthomas]

Hi Phil,

Thanks for the offer to look at the files. I've sent all the tmps and autosaves over to you via email.

After some investigating I discovered the 'Less strict checking' tickbox in preferences. This allowed me to open the uvl files and make the final tweaks I needed.

But it would be good to know what had caused the problem in the first place.

Also on an unrelated note can I make a feature request that for Windows users we're able to point the autosave and temp folder at a new location ? It'd be really useful and save having to dig through to appdata to find these files.

Many thanks
ben

[headus]

" I've sent all the tmps and autosaves over to you via email."

Thanks, got 'em! I should be able to work out what the problem is, with the idea being that a patch will fix the loading problem. Fixing what caused the corruption in the first place will be trickier, unless you can replicate it from the original OBJ in a few easily explainable steps.

"After some investigating I discovered the 'Less strict checking' tickbox in preferences."

Interesting ... maybe the answer then is to simply update the error message so that preference is listed as an alternative, or moved out of preferences and into the normal Load options so its more visible.

"... point the autosave and temp folder at a new location ? It'd be really useful and save having to dig through to appdata to find these files."

You shouldn't have to be doing that anyway ... the temp and auto saves should be going into the same folder as the loaded OBJ or UVL. How are you normally launching UVLayout?

Phil

[bencowellthomas]

"unless you can replicate it from the original OBJ in a few easily explainable steps. "

No sorry, it seems to just occur after 20-30 minutes of editing. The fact that I can't tag edges seems the key to the state changing though. The only time I can guess the software is in this untaggable mode is when it's relaxing shells, so perhaps it's getting stuck in this mode and not coming out it ?

"the temp and auto saves should be going into the same folder as the loaded OBJ or UVL. How are you normally launching UVLayout? "

Ah ha .. this makes sense. I'm using the uvpipe plugin which is probably using my appdata folder as a temp location. I'll repoint this to my working folder and all will be good.

[headus]

Thanks, got the OBJ, and have emailed a couple of questions.

Phil

[sav04ka]

hello, can you tell me what settings should i use in OBJ export to keep smooth groups from 3ds max?

[headus]

Normals have been imported/exported automatically since v2.09.01. If its not working for you, then export an OBJ from 3DS, then load it right back in again. If you smooth groups and/or normals are missing, then check your settings in 3DS for OBJ import and export.

Phil