headus 3D tools

[WhiteShark]

Helle there!
I am having troubles to get a nice result when bloating/flattening meshes in UV-layout.
The problem is that in areas where there are fairly large amount of detail (edges that are close together compared to the surrounding geometry) the edges seem to collapse in on each other.
When bloating everything seems to look fine but when I "unbloat" them these problems occur, the UV's "snake" around each other for example.

Second problem; I get different results when I drop the same mesh into the UV-view.
What I mean is that the bloating of the mesh differs depending on how the dropped mesh places itself in the UV-view.
Sometimes the mesh is perfectly aligned, sometimes it is tinted slightly and this cause the bloating to behave differently.

Third; When I cut edges and drop them to UV-view I sometimes get the message "not detached" and the mesh simply refuse to drop down to UV-view.
The solution is to make a cut on a single edge, drop it and then weld it back. But this does not always work depending on how the mesh looks like (for example a "ladder" looking mesh - a flat plane with edges only in the vertical span)

Hopefully I made some sense in trying to explain the various issues!
Thanks in advance
/Jacob

[headus]

"The problem is that in areas where there are fairly large amount of detail (edges that are close together compared to the surrounding geometry) the edges seem to collapse in on each other."

Without seeing you mesh its hard to properly advise on way to fix the collapsing, but generally speaking this sort of thing occurs when you try to flatten a large curved shell and don't put enough cuts in to release the pressure. The most common example here is a face, and the nose gets compressed, or collapses in the worst cases.

There's a couple of solutions :

1) Add more cuts/seams to allow the shell to flatten out more.

2) Or apply some local scaling to the collapsing polys. The "Head" tutorial video at uvlayout.com goes through this a bit.

3) Or simply run a '6' hotkey smoothing brush over the collapsed polys. This is pretty much the same as the "relax" function that you'll find in other UV editors. You'll get some distortion in the final result, but its a quick way to fix the mess.

"Sometimes the mesh is perfectly aligned, sometimes it is tinted slightly and this cause the bloating to behave differently."

I'm guessing you really meant "tilted" there. Anyway, the quick answer is "don't worry about it" :-) The flattening that follows will give the same result, regardless of tilt. If it does worry you though, you can re-orient the shell after a bit of flattening, to get it upright, then re-bloat.

"Third; When I cut edges and drop them to UV-view I sometimes get the message "not detached""

Had you undropped shells before that? I have just fixed a bug that could be the cause, so will upload a new installer sometime in the next couple of days.

Phil

[WhiteShark]

Hi again and thanks for the swift replies!

I will try to make more cuts in the mesh in order to avoid those pesky bevels and high density areas.
I suppose I need to be more careful when selecting what edges to cut and which to leave out.

Yes, tilted is the word I meant!
Hmm, not sure about this one, I will post some pictures during the day if I encounter it again...maybe it's me doing something awfully wrong

About the "already detached" thing, yes I believe I dropped and undropped shells a couple of times and then I suddenly bumped into the issue, I will report back if/when I encounter that again

Yet again, thanks for the replies!

[headus]

Regarding the "not detached" error, I've just uploaded a new Pro version install that should fix it. Details are here.

Phil