headus 3D tools

Dodger · Posts: 83 Joined: 14 Jan 2006

Funny how it's hard to think of things until suddenly you encounter the thing that's slowing you down...

I have a mesh of a bikey jacket that I'm (re)making.
The old version was simple. Had just flat panels for the zips with transmapping and specularity mapping and bumpmapping. It looked good at a distance.

The new version made me decide to go a bit farther, and I've learned tricks in 3DSMax since like how to snapshot animation along a spline into a mesh. So I made a real zip -- low poly and all, but with all the teeth. Actually, being a bikey jacket, it's got like seven zips, some of which are pretty long (the two front ones).

Each has anywhere from 20 to 80 teeth. Assuming 20 for the small ones and 80 for the two long ones each, that's 260 teeny little objects.

Now if I had half a brain I'd have mapped ONE of them and then did the animation array thing. But I'm a tard and I didn't, and I really don't want to re-do the whole mess of them.

What I'm thinking would be REALLY cool and probably relatively easy to do based on the same base code as the Symmetry code is this:

Duplicate Mode (in both Ed and UV modes, using some unused key)
Click one solid/shell. Click others that share the same core mesh to make them clone the same UVs. In the case of ones with rotary symmetry and such (as these have) you could do something like map the poly that's got the normal most facing-away from the centre of the whole mesh as 'out' and treat the ones on all the elements that follow that same rule as the same one, for instance.

Then a user just has to select, for instance, one zip-tooth, and then can simply click all the others (or maybe even select with a box in some mode) to make the rest all follow the same cuts, flattens, etc. These wouldn't be symmetry targets, because they'd all be assumed to probably follow the same direction.

But it would save on cutting all 260 of them, dropping three parts for each, then having to initially flatten them all because auto-flatten mode doesn't work on things not initially squished past bright blue mode, and so on.

Does that make sense?

headus · Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 3:57 pm Post subject:

Perfect sense ... you want the Symmetry tool to work across multiple identical shells.

It so happens I'm about to start on a "Copy UVs" tool ... lets say for example you've UV'd a head, then this tool could be used to copy those UVs to a second head with identical (or close to identical) topology. I'm thinking this could be made to handle your multiple identical objects as well.

Unfortunately, because of other things happening round here, the "Copy UVs" tool probably wont be ready for another couple of weeks. Sorry!

Phil

cragganmore · Posts: 6 Joined: 27 Feb 2008

Hi Phil,

Any chance that this feature is still in the pipeline? It'd be incredibly useful for me. Regardless, thanks for such an amazing tool.

headus · Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 6:13 pm Post subject:

Definitely still in the pipeline, but there's a blockage somewhere and finished tools aren't coming out the other end of that pipe as fast as I would like. Actually, its more of a narrowing ... big ones like the "copy uvs" tool are stuck, but smaller ones are still getting through (yesterdays release was a number of smaller changes).

Anyway, the "copy uvs" tool is right near the top of the list, and is half working already, so should be done sooner rather than later.

Phil

twocust · Posts: 77 Joined: 25 Feb 2006

hmmm...what's that account number again for plying you with beer money to help
"de-obfuscate" the blockages? (mmmmm...beeeer)

Laughing

headus · Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 11:19 pm Post subject:

Lots of shouting usually gets things moving again :-)

I'll dust the cobwebs off to see if I can get it going ... the copy uvs thing was only a small part of a larger tool, so I might be able to finish that one bit off without having to worry about the whole thing right now.

Phil

headus · Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 2:16 am Post subject:

Here you go ... hot off the press preliminary results from the new "Copy UVs" tool.

I'm away most of next week unfortunately, but I'll keep on working on this when I get back. It doesn't do mirror copies yet, and I have to test it on a bunch of other objects too, but I hope to have a new release ready by this time next week.

Its 7pm here on a Friday evening ... time for that beer I think :-)

Phil

UVguy · Posts: 19 Joined: 23 Feb 2008

wow.. that was fast.. !!!

headus · Posted: Tue Mar 11, 2008 1:14 am Post subject:

The new Copy UVs tool is now available for Pro users. See this posting for details ...

http://www.headus.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=523

It only partially answers Dodgers original request (you have to pick matching edges on the source and target objects) so I'll need to work on it some more to speed up the copy to 260 identical objects.

Phil