maya uv map move face or edge

Ged

Hey people Is it possible to move faces or edges in mayas uv texture editor? Im moving over to maya from cinema4d at work and I cant figure out why the radial menu to select faces/verts/edges/uvs only seems to work properly in the uv editor when I select the uv option? why are the other options visible if they dont work, eg I cant move edges or faces or rotate them?

Gilgamesh

Yup,

select by face convert to uv then move as normal. Then in essence you are moving the entire face selected by UV's within the uv editor. I have convert to uv bound to a key so working with the UV editor is painless as possible

Ged

ah ok thanks, so you have to convert to uvs, hmm seems I need to set up quite a few shortcuts to do things that in my past experience should have been simple one click operations. Other than that I'm enjoying maya. Is there a uv mapping plugin that speeds things up a lot? also extruding and insetting are a tiny bit more laborious than necessary is there any plugin for that?

BARDLER

No there is an easier way. In the UV editor right click and pick what you want to select, then hit q, and it will let you select whatever you want.

Ged

silentbrains wrote: »

Be careful that you're not moving the actual edges and faces when you try to move them in the uv editor! If you're using a past version of maya then this would be a concern, but it looks like they stopped that behaviour in more recent versions. (was such a downer after doing a bunch of work tetris-ing in the editor to go back to the model and see that a bunch of verts and edges had been moved.)

Not sure if your version has these shortcuts, but ctrl+f12 should convert your selection to UVs, or you can use the marking menu (hold ctrl+rmouse). It would be nice if it behaved like cinema4d, though. It sounds more intuitive.

cinema4ds uv mapping isnt that great, I use max at home and its similar to cinema4d but a little better, maya seems rather confusing when it comes to uvs compared to pretty much every other app Ive seen. Im using maya 2012 at work, it doesnt seem to move edges/verts when I move them in the uv editor so hopefully thats ok.

BARDLER wrote: »

No there is an easier way. In the UV editor right click and pick what you want to select, then hit q, and it will let you select whatever you want.

can you explain this a little more? I thought q would quit the current tool...

BARDLER

Sorry, I wasn't thinking, or paying attention lol, I think I was a little tired. Yes in Maya you can't move edges or faces in the UV editor, but you can select them(which is what I posted for some reason)

the q key goes to selection mode which is what you need to be on in the UV editor in order for edge or face selection to work. Once you have an edge or face selected, hold down ctrl and right click to pull up the radial menu, then select to UVs. It can also be useful to use that menu to select an edge loop since double clicking an edge loop does not work in the UV editor.

Ged

ah cool thanks for clarifying, seems like the uv editor could do with an update.

BARDLER

Yea for sure. Some parts of Maya are amazing, and some parts are like WTF really?

Ged

ok sort of related question. When I planar/camera map any object maya automatically normalizes it to 0,1 space which is annoying as that nearly always distorts the uvs, how do I turn off normalization?

Also how can I unselect uv verts? I have a shape that Ive split off but whenever I grab it all the verts its linked to on the other uv islands come with

BARDLER

In the mapping options it has a setting for keeping the image ratio, or something like that, which will map it correctly for you.

You want to use the select shell tool at the top of the UV editor menu. Its in the top left group of buttons in the UV editor near the unfold tool.

Ged

thanks I just found it, wierd way to label a uv setting! oh so when you use the edge break tool to cut the uvs apart you have to move them apart with the shell tool rather than the move uvs tool?

passerby

Ged wrote: »

thanks I just found it, wierd way to label a uv setting! oh so when you use the edge break tool to cut the uvs apart you have to move them apart with the shell tool rather than the move uvs tool?

either works, it is just easier to use the move UV's tool, or select 1 uv in the shell, and use the to shell.

since it is rather hard to select to perfectly overlapping UV's with the plain old click selection or box selection.

Ged

ok thanks, now Im just trying to delete some verts I dont need so that I can mirror/duplicate special some geometry but maya wont let me delete the verts along the last edge its left aaarrrgh Ive tried the del key and delete verts/edges button

EDIT! nevermind I just rotated until i could see the face that the verts bordered and used del key on the face mode instead. Why didnt it work in vert mode!?