blender questions
polycounter lvl 11
How can I weld nearby verts? For optimizing and removing duplicate vertices or double faces id select all vertices in max and do a weld at .001, how can I do this in blender? EDIT - just found remove doubles, but that doesn't help when I need to fill a gap :S
Smoothing groups, the only method ive seen so far is edge splitting, is this safe for game objects and baking? Is this the same technique max uses for its smoothing groups?
Will probably post more as I learn more lol, thanks
Smoothing groups, the only method ive seen so far is edge splitting, is this safe for game objects and baking? Is this the same technique max uses for its smoothing groups?
Will probably post more as I learn more lol, thanks
Replies
for example, you have a line of double verts that you need welded, sort of like
---<:=:=:=:=:
lol@drawing. But instead of selecting the pairs one at a time and merging the vertices at center is there any way I can just select them all and hit weld and choose a distance? That way only nearby vertices are merged (and in turn the ones I wanted to be merged get merged)
for welding: try to press alt+m after selecting two vertices that you want to weld. you get three options. see what suits your needs best. i don't know however, if there is a way to weld several vertices at once.
concerning smoothing groups: mark sharp and clear sharp is exactly what you need. you see the results even without having the edge split modifier on you model. but you need the modifier when you export the model for a game engine for example.
while exporting, blender will actually split the model at hard edges which results in two vertices in one position. this is what happens in game engines at smoothing group borders, but might confuse you when you open the model in another modelling tool...
Thanks for the other info on smoothing groups guys. So splitting edges is also how max/maya do their smoothing groups? They just don't call it edge splitting? I just want to make sure it isn't destructive or anything. Why does exporting face normals do the same thing without edge splitting/smoothing groups?
The blender method is how things will be on the GFX card but its a pain to work with. Probably a case of a programmer 'knowing best', Personally I think it'd be best to let the game engine handle that and give the artist a workable model.
really don't get why they cant just implement it like other packages do so. It could be compatible with data from other packages. hell it wouldn't even change the workflow, it could just be a new modifier, "normals spilt", since you can already tag edges as soft or hard like in maya anyways, all the modifer would change is how data is exported.
Ya if you leave the edge split modifer on you can still edit underlying mesh easily
if I uv map a medium poly model and I need to make an even lower poly one. If I remove edge loops from the medium poly one will my uvs stay in tact like in max?
I need a low poly and a medium poly to share the same uv map
I need a low poly and a medium poly to share the same uv map
If you remove an edge loop, Blender will seemingly obliterate that same edge loop in the UV island. There are ways around it though, if you go to your 3D view port and click on the 'Mesh' menu, enable 'Auto Merging' (Should be at the top).
Then go to your bottom toolbar and click on the magnet icon to enable auto snapping. Next to the magnet icon is another menu, select the Vertex function from the pop-up menu.
Now swap back to your 'UV' window and right click on the vertex (Or vertices - I always get confused) you want to move and snap it to the corresponding edge from the model. Hold 'CTRL' down to deactivate the magnet snapping temporarily for fine tuning. Rinse and repeat for the rest of the missing edge loop on the 'UV' island.
Also, if you haven't - I would strongly recommend downloading this script pack for the 2.6x versions of Blender. It adds around 80 scripts that improve the modelling functionality of Blender. Think Graphite tools but Blender style...
Go to your 'Preferences' and click on the 'Addons' tab to enable & disable the scripts, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Download: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/File:Addons_contrib_bundle_2.64
(It gets updated per Blender build...)
Info: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Toolkits
For custom Blender builds, go here: http://www.graphicall.org/
I can pop some images up if you want?
Pm me if you need any help, I'll gladly help ya out...
Blender I have to mark seams and then re unwrap the entire selection again...? I can't find any good tutorials on people who uv map like max/maya, only people who have been blenderfied and know no better way
What are you trying to do exactly?
If you select faces and hit unwrap it will unwrap just those faces. The faces you select in the 3d viewport are the UVs that will appear in the UV editor (if you have UVs that exist for those faces). If you select all of the faces for the object (hit 'a') you can see all the UVs you've unwrapped so far.
If you select only certain faces in the 3d viewport you can move just their UVs in the UV editor, and even if they would normally be attached to other islands, they become their own island, no marking seams involved.
Marking seams is mainly for doing the unwrap functions (like auto unwrapping selected faces). I'm unwrapping a cube as I type this without marking seams, I select a face of the cube in the viewport, have it face the view orthographically(numpad 5), hit 'u' in the viewport and project from view, and that face is its own island. Hit 'a' in the 3d viewport to deselect and once more to select all in order to see it together with any other UVs the object has.
This is sort of a difficult topic to describe in words so if you have any questions or can clarify what you'd like to do let me know.
As MightyPea mentioned, you can use the dissolve tool to get rid of unwanted geometry without affecting the UVs, but be sure to use it on the edges with the remove vertices option enabled. Also, if you use it on edges that are also UV seams, the UV will break.
As to the uvs, is there a relax tool?
So I can select faces, hit unwrap, cut a seam and then select the faces again and unwrap again and itll cut the seam?
If I select faces in the uv editor will it select them in the viewport or do I have to select them manually again...?
Would experiment myself but im at work and these are the only other issues I had
As for cutting a seam, just reunwrap. E in the uv-window, or just press U again the the viewport (yes, this is a ridiculous inconsistency. Blender's full of them)
If you already have the rest where you want it, just pin them (p, alt-p to unpin) and unwrap, or only select the faces you want to unwrap. If you do that though, it'll unwrap to the full uv's, but there's a tool that matches the scale of your islands. Err, off the top of my head, alt-a? Not sure, but you'll find it in the UV menu.
edit: pm me if you want me to take you through how I use it. We can do a Google hangout or something.
If you look at the thin toolbar below the UV window, the one with all of the menus and icons, if you look to the right you'll see the selection types, vertex, edge, face, island, and right after that is where the 'sticky selection' modes are. If you select 'Disabled' in that box then your selected UV faces will be moved as detached from unselected faces. Basically you can imagine all of the UVs being treated as unmerged or merged depending on that option.
If you would like a more automated way to smooth you can pin ('p') the points you want to remain still (so maybe the island borders) and run 'Minimize stretch' ('ctrl v'). That will keep running and calculating until you left click (right click to cancel as usual).
Edit: another thing to add would be if you'd like to visualize the stretching, like you might in another app, in the side panel ('n') under 'Display' you can check 'Stretch' to visualize angle or area distortion.
You can straighten UV edges quite easily by scaling the points along an axis to 0. So if you would like to straighten edges vertically you can select those points, press 's', 'x', 0, enter or lmb (rmb to cancel as usual). All of the transformations are pretty much the same as in the 3d viewport.
You can specify specific coordinates in the 'n' menu if you would like to snap precisely to the edge or the map or by specific pixels (the default is 256x256 but you can change that by specifying image dimensions with 'new image').
Say I got the left side of the slide, the center, and the right side each projected from view one at a time, but I wanted to stitch them together so its one fanned out slide plate from above, how would I do that? If I stitch in the uv view will it stitch the seams in the viewport also?
And how can I make it so I can see all my islands without having the faces selected in the viewport so I don't put any faces over anything else accidentally
Thanks!
Edit: to answer your other question you can just leave all the faces selected in the viewport ('a' for select all). you can select linked uv's by hovering over them and pressing 'l' or 'ctrl l', I believe there's a difference for some reason I can't remember, and as was mentioned you can select and then hide anything you don't want to see with 'h'. You don't have to just rely on the viewport for what you see and don't see (alt+h to unhide).
right shift and number pad with a selection, aligns the camera to that selection normal instead of world coords.
if your hard edge seams are putting you off the uv seams you can then off in the n window.
so I finally got a basic thing going but I can't tell how distorted it is because the grid wont appear in the 3d view..
also why are those verts red?
You may need to play with the shader settings though, press 'N' to bring up your viewport control panel and scroll down to the 'Display' tab. Navigate to the bottom where it says 'Shading:' and change it to 'GLSL'.
Play around with adding some lamps and whatnot to illuminate the area.
If that doesn't work then you may need to assign the grid texture to your UV mapped model.
In which case:
Navigate to your texture tab:
Add a new texture.
Then below change 'Type:' to Image:
Then scroll down and click on 'Open'.
Navigate to said image.
After adding the image, scroll down to where it says 'Mapping'.
Click on the dropdown menu and select 'Coordinates' -> 'UV'.
Then select your UV map by clicking on the orange box icon below.
Done.
pinning means they stay put when you re unwrap
you can also turn on live uv, try it its a tick box under UVs, unpin everything then pin 2 verts next to each other then move one and leave the other in place
if you do everything with pins and seams it means you can re unwrap everything at any time and it keeps the same layout, so can be handy.
It appears you pinned a whole segment, when you could have only pinned the edge.
you should reassess if you actually want your UV layout to be amazingly tightly packed and perfectly orientated so every lines on an axis, I stopped caring about it and now uving is really quick and feel better about life and the universe in general. ok maybe not quite.
You know what they say, if you want something done well "Do it yourself".
It may take time to align all the edges on an axis but atleast the job gets done well. lol
after you do a unwrap hit f6 or look in the toolbar and try conformal, or angle based unwrap
i find conformal works better for hard surface mesehs ,when you want straight uv's
As was mentioned, you can type in actual texel coordinates for points, you can have your selected points snap to the nearest texels, and you can hold ctrl and do snapping for your transformations like you would in the 3d viewport.
If you're working based on the texels it's probably a good idea to work with the max texture resolution you'll be using; so when you set up 'new image' use that resolution and have your values snap to it. In the UV menu there's a box you can check to keep the verts snapped to integer values as you transform them. I don't worry too much about snapping and perfect alignment if anything is too dense, but I think it could still work out.
Not the most essential feature for most things, but it seems like you're trying to keep clean, and this is another useful feature for that.