headus 3D tools

waller · Posts: 2 Joined: 14 Oct 2007

Hello.
I work with LW 9; for sake of semplicity (and also 'cause I have many morphs and a detailed model), I'm unwrapping my model by chunks: one for the hair, one for the head, and so on. Well, I did so in the hope that UVL had saved me many hours easily; but I wasn't aware of some issues.
The only piece I unwrapped so far, is the skullcap; its uv-unwrap mesh was named by UVL with a default name, so when I opened it in LW I had to rename its uv-map "bodymap", because I thought to make the skullcap a part of the uv map (which is 512^2) where I'll place the body parts (the head map got no free space, 'cause it is already a 512^2); thus I open in LW the skullcap file (which was exported as obj from Deep Exploration, then processed in UVL, and again exported as lwo with DE), but, when I paste it into the full body uv, LW gives me two maps named "bodymap" (and obviously, the new skullcap unwrapping doesn't show up among the other body parts, which has been unwrapped in LW only so far)...
How can I solve this issue?

Best.

headus · Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2007 6:28 pm Post subject:

I'm sorry, I don't really understand your problem ... it sounds like something to do with object handling/naming in LW, and not something specifically related to UVLayout. By all means correct me if I'm wrong :-)

Phil

waller · Posts: 2 Joined: 14 Oct 2007

Hello Phil. The question is as follows:

I made the model of humanoid puppet (1200 polys, untripled), done with LW 9; from this model I separated the part called "skullcap" (that is, the skullcap of the puppet), to which I assigned a bulk uv map projection (planar, from top), called "body" (which is the same as for the remainder pieces of the body; the head got a map apart, called "head").
I saved it on the desktop as "skullcap.lwo", then I opened this with a conversion program (Deep Exploration, "DE"), that converted and saved it as "skullcap.obj"; thereafter I loaded this file into UVlayout, wherein I unwrapped it; finally I saved the processed mesh, loaded again in DE, converted as an lwo file, and finally loaded into LW9.
UVL gave to the object's map a name such "map1" or the like (I don't remember); though, I must integrate the reconverted skullcap within the "body" map!
But I guess that's really a question for LW forums... Peraphs it is better to ask there.

Anyway, when I tried to load into UVL the whole body (converted as an obj file) in order to avoid this kind of problem, I got an error: "problems slicing - check console for errors" (and the cyslice console said: "uvlayout: couldn't find edge! 829-818 - uvlayout: couldn't find edge! 840-829", and many other lines like these, with other numbers. at the end there is "uvlayout: realloc(276620944) failed. ran out of memory?". I have 1gb ram).

Best.

headus · Posted: Thu Oct 18, 2007 1:30 am Post subject:

"UVL gave to the object's map a name such "map1" or the like"

You might want to try UVLayout's Update button instead of the normal Save. It opens up a file selection where you would select the original OBJ file that you loaded, and it creates a copy of that with only the UV coordinates changes. The normal Save strips out all the original OBJ group naming information, so that may be the cause of your problems.

"I got an error: "problems slicing - check console for errors" "

Are you able to email me that OBJ file? If I can get it to go wrong here then theres a good chance I can fix the bug.

Phil

headus · Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 5:27 pm Post subject:

Thanks for sending the file! There's a couple of things in that geometry that could be causing the problems.

1) Some polys have inverted normals. If you look at "snap0002" below, one of those faces on the block is tinted blue, meaning that the normal is facing inwards. You'll also see a dashed blue line around it, meaning that the poly had to be detached because of the discontinuity in surface normals at that point.

2) Some edges are "non-manifold". In "snap0003" below, you'll see that 3 polygons share the one edge (I've pulled one of them back to make it easier to see). Polys are automatically detached again around non-manifold edges.

If I load as Poly, with New and Clean selected, the mesh does come up. I suspect the bug is in the Clean operation ... its not properly cleaning up the topology (ie detaching polys) when Edit is selected.

If LW has some sort of "clean topology" tool, I'd try that on your mesh before exporting the OBJ file. Otherwise, until I can fix the bug, you're only chance at loading that mesh is with New selected.

Phil