headus 3D tools

[Tragic]

When you use the ROTATE BUTTON to rotate a mesh, dose it go Counter Clock Wise or Clock Wise?

Is there a way to "load" an existing bitmap into the UV Space so I can see it either in the UV Layout on the polygons or in the 3D Space?

Basically I am mapping a hard surface model (wanted to try something I think would be easier for my learning.. plus all the snap and clone tools and what not)

I have a number of decals that will be applied to the object and thought it would be cool to orientate the shells in UVLayout so they are easy to paint in Photoshop. At the moment they uv great but some of the shells are sideways or on a angle in the 2D map, Looking for a way to rotate them (with numeric values) to orientate them to the x,y pixel space in my 2D image app (hehe,, no idea if those terms are correct!)


Also, on this note... is there a way to enable / disable rotating when packing.. so after my rotation adjustments they are locked?


Thanks again!

[Tragic]

I'm such an idiot.. there is a function called trace... for the UV Map... and you can go ot preferences to change the numbered map into your texture!...

[headus]

"there is a function called trace"

Yep, that's the one :) Don't apologize for being a noob ... there's a lot of buttons and hotkeys, and even I have to check the guides or code sometimes to remind myself how to do some of the more obscure things.

"When you use the ROTATE BUTTON to rotate a mesh, dose it go Counter Clock Wise or Clock Wise?"

I had to check myself, and actually its a bit backwards (oops!), but is probably too late to change now if everyone is used to how its been. Positive angles rotate anti-clockwise, and negative angles rotate clockwise.

" but some of the shells are sideways or on a angle in the 2D map"

A quick way to rotate 90 degrees is with the '\' hotkey. Also have a look at the "Align To Axes" tool under Move/Scale/Rotate panel. It will orient all selected shells (or all shells if nothing is selected) so that the majority of edges are aligned with the axes; it works well on obvious things like gridded squarish shells.

" is there a way to enable / disable rotating when packing.. so after my rotation adjustments they are locked?"

By default, rotation during packing should be turned off already, and you have to tick the Rotate button to enable it. If you want to enable rotation generally but lock the orientation of just some shells, then the use the '|' hotkey to tag the shells you don't want to rotate; you should see a blue up arrow appear over them, which indicates those ones have locked orientation.

Phil