headus 3D tools

etherealink · Posts: 6 Joined: 12 Apr 2008

Ok, I know I'm only using the demo, but this is the first time it happened and I almost fell out of my chair when it did. I dropped a mesh to the uv area and pushed shift-f to bloat it first since I'd had problems getting it to flatten correctly. When I tried to stop the mesh from flattening I got stuck doing the operation for over a half-hour that ended up causing me to restart the computer to release the program. I could still do everything else on the computer, including write this bug report... but I'm thinking this was not the intended reaction when using this operation.

*edit* saw the post from crumbly on the same problem, I'll try to duplicate with the same mesh and see if that fixes it should the same thing happen

headus · Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2008 7:03 pm Post subject:

"causing me to restart the computer"

Killing the run-away process should be enough. Under Windows you can use Ctrl-Alt-Delete to show the list of running processes, then click on the "CPU" tab to sort by CPU usage, then right click on the one thats using the most (it should be "cyeatD" if the flattening is running) to get to the Kill menu option.

As far at the bloat goes, the video is out-of-date and doesn't show the required "hit space to release boundary" step, followed by a second "hit space to stop flattening". But I get the impression you might already be doing that and maybe its ignoring your spaces? Anyway, I'll have a look at the code, and am thinking a "stop after 5 minutes" might be a good safety measure.

Phil

etherealink · Posts: 6 Joined: 12 Apr 2008

don't know if the edit part of the post got there or not so I'll add it here. I was not able to duplicate the bug but the idea of mousing off the shells to hit space worked well. As an aside, having a limit for that function would be nice, even if it was a limit of the number times that it runs.

I do however have a bit of a problem with a mesh and I'm not sure what is going wrong but the textured view in the 3d area shows the texture twisting on a rather simple mesh. I'll put some images up tonight to show what I mean since it's most likely lack of program knowledge. Any help with it would be appreciated since without UV Layout I will have to use XSI and that will be tricky.

By the way, I tested the plug-in for XSI on version 6.01 and it works flawlessly when using XSI's native export to .obj option, now if I could just learn what I'm doing in Layout I would be fine! lol

headus · Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 7:28 pm Post subject: Re: RE: comp crash

"having a limit for that function would be nice"

I agree, so its been added to the latest installers. Both stages of the bloat will run for a maximum of 1 minute now. That should be plenty of time for any shell to sort itself out, and of course you can still tap space to stop it early. Any further flattening can be done with Optimize or Space-F.

"textured view in the 3d area shows the texture twisting"

Yes, please upload some pics. I did fix a couple of bugs recently that have also made it into yesterdays releases ... use of the Backslash and Ctrl-Arrow keys to rotate and upright shells wasn't updating the displayed UVs, so that might have been the cause of your problem.

Phil

etherealink · Posts: 6 Joined: 12 Apr 2008

Ok, so here's the deal I'm having, and here's the image it's intended to be, I just want to have the option to hand paint textures. This should give you some idea of what's going on and maybe what I've done wrong.

Hopefully I can get this figured out, thanks for all the help.

Patrick

headus · Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 7:13 pm Post subject:

Thanks, excellent pics ... now I know what you mean by "twisted".

Whats happening is that UVLayout is flattening UV shells to minimize distortion, and because the widest part of the vase has more surface area, those UVs are pushed out to give them more texture space, and so you get the curves shapes.

What you need to do is to straighten the edges in the flattened shell, and that'll give you UVs that flow in the way I think you want. See the image below ... its a sequence from default flattening to horizontal straightening only to full straightening. The straightening is achieved with the Ctrl-I hotkey (added in the latest releases a few days ago), but its only available in the purchased versions of UVLayout, not in the Demo. You can try it out though via the Hobbyist or Pro trail versions included with the Demo.

Phil

etherealink · Posts: 6 Joined: 12 Apr 2008

That would be perfect for it to do that and you're right on about what I'd like it to do. Would it be possible for that to be a built-in feature where you could tag an edge or set of points or polys and have layout make them straight to a specified angle? Something like "align edges/polys(selection)"? I would think it would make the task of dealing with curved edges a great deal easier.

On the topic though, I'll try the pro demo and see if that does what I want it to, would be the incentive to buy the full version I think.

headus · Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 6:56 pm Post subject:

"make them straight to a specified angle"

At the moment its either axis aligned (I hotkey) or straight to whatever angle it works out to be least distortion (K hotkey). But theres nothing stopping you from rotating the shell once it flattened of course, and maybe with some strategically placed pin points (P hotkey) you could get the angles you wanted as well.

Phil

etherealink · Posts: 6 Joined: 12 Apr 2008

I'll try that Phil. Thanks for the quick attention to the boards. I just noticed after taking a look at a Modo tutorial video, and I doubt it had much but influence, that the uvmapping workflow in Modo is quite similar to the one here in UV Layout... although with a great many less features and functionality.

Only question I do have regarding the way modo works is that modo has the option to unwrap a mesh starting with "standard" projections (cylindrical, planar, cubic,etc.) and then unwrap somewhat like the way that UV Layout does. What I wanted to know is if this is something that could be implemented in UV Layout or if it would be too intensive to start with? Something like that along with the way that UV Layout already has control of the mesh would make it even more of a force in the CG world than it already is.

Just something to think about, thanks for all the help.

Patrick

headus · Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 4:31 pm Post subject:

"standard projections"

Actually, I hadn't thought of adding that ... you're the first to ask :-) I never expected people to use UVLayout for man-made objects, which suit standard projections more than organics (eg humans, creatures, trees). But I can see that for things like your lamps, a standard unwrap might save a step or two. I've added it to the list!

Phil