3Ds Max horrible packing compared to other packages
polycounter lvl 11
Hi guys,
Im wondering if I am missing something. 3ds max more often than not gives me horrible Uv packing. If I send the mesh to modo, 3d coat, ipackthat (havent tried maya) those packages gives MUCH better and tighter packing.
Am I missing some secret technique in max to get at least better packing that what my eye can easily spot is ridiculous?
Im wondering if I am missing something. 3ds max more often than not gives me horrible Uv packing. If I send the mesh to modo, 3d coat, ipackthat (havent tried maya) those packages gives MUCH better and tighter packing.
Am I missing some secret technique in max to get at least better packing that what my eye can easily spot is ridiculous?
Replies
http://www.polytools3d.com/polyunwrapper/
But I doubt anything is going to beat IPackThat.
Im not sure if I can install the demo at work, so I might check when I get home
That would be great
I have already done textools vs modo vs coat, max lost big time
Strongly disagree. You might be able to do as well as iPackThat but you won't do it in any sort of time efficient way.
What iPackThat does in 5 minutes will take you hours and hours.
Yes i strongly agree, Polyunwrapper has packing and also offers fairly advantageous additional tools. Your input is a great addition to this thread. Interconnecting minds think alike i would assume. You must be wise man.
I think i've meet you via this forum not too long ago. Your knowledge, experience and practical understanding of modeling programs is always desirable and sought after.
Hats off
I appreciate the compliments! I have to admit that I have not yet tried IPackThat, but it's been on my list of things to play with. This thread is making me want to go give it a shot when I get home!
@poopstick, if you are painting in 3D, you might prefer texel density over logical layout.
for me a layout matters only if I texture something manually in Photoshop which is a very rare occurence. Most times it's color mask + something procedural like Painter/Designer/Quixel. The only thing that matters is UV orientation and you can control that with iPackThat. Also you can group by material and preset groups in iPack if that's your thing.
Because every pixel unused on a texture map is a pixel that isn't helping your art look it's best.
I'm moving over to Max after years of using Maya (requirement by employer) and I'm not really surprised that the UV tools are so lacking. I do hate the fact that I will have to leave my own UV editor behind and handicap myself using the native crap in 3ds Max (something which will affect all UV work immensely). Hell, in Max you can't even work with UV's and do modelling in parallel without collapsing your mesh and applying new UVW modifiers all the time (which you can in Maya).
Autodesk way of "improving" the UV editor is to add a checker mode to Maya, and some UV sculpting tools that no one even use. It really makes you wonder if they even read the feedback they get.
There's a secret in 3dsMax concerning UVs that isn't well known. Maybe one day i'll write a book about it.
Now a pro artist once told me it was a requirement for his work but he never explained why. And I didn't have the heart to insist, it's so cruel to force an artist to unwrap in Max (yes, I know about Textools, NO, it still doesn't make it palatable.)
Still, will check out that tool you're mentioning.
I like Headus and we use it, I just don't see it replacing Max for the work I do. But you're welcome to change my view! I'm always open to learning something new.
Max packing - 56.67% used of 2048
Polyunwrapper packing - 50.12% used of 2048
My packing, with Polyunwrapper packing small peices - 62.81% used of 2048
I prefer a mixture of hand packing and Polyunwrapper packing. It's not the best packer for large UV shells, at least not in my experience. I could get even better packing if I didn't have a specification requiring certain areas be mapped in a certain way - I'm being deliberately vague, so just take my word for it.
You have to pick one edge, yes. Take 5 seconds and then uvs will propagate to all similar sub-objects. I'm not trying to change your view, I just mean to say that UV Layout is viable for hard surface as well - that's pretty much 90% of what I do.
I may open it up again and try it in the future. Thanks for the info, regardless!
As for the UI... I thought a bit about defending this ugly piece of @#$% and then remembered people dare to defend Zbrush's and even get offended that some people could criticize it, so why the heck not?
What I like about Headus is that there's pretty much a hotkey for everything, I only occasionally click a button. They're not the most intuitive ones but if you print them to a sheet of paper and keep it next to you, you will be fluent in a couple of days and super fast.
Eh, that's why you bake an ID map.
Its not hard to get at and manipulate uvs via maxscript but it appears to be a right pain in the butthole making any changes to the unwrapper ui. Ive only dabbled a bit cos I wanted some uv align buttons so there may be a good way I didnt find.
Fwiw I find max is a million times better at actually unwrapping objects than maya - its just awful for laying out the results
Out of interest, how do those espousing the use of auto packing tools deal with Lods?
For me the "trck" for a quick UV Map are hotkeys (stitch, break, relax align, rotate, flip).
Also I have to agree to peanut™ : the best UV packer is you
For me the benefit of doing your UV Map yourself is, that you can keep things together, align them (to avoid jaggy edges) and you already know your UV Map (where it what etc.)
As I really "hate" UV Mapping, I looked for a lot of different solutions (including IPackThat) but most of them never came up with good results compared to the "self-packed" UVs.
So even if it takes a little longer, I prefer the "self-UV" methode at the moment.
Packers have options to overcome a lot of the objections above as well.
Need to keep islands together? Make them a group.
Need to keep edges straight on a few islands? Mark them as 'not able to rotate'.
Need to keep an island exactly where it is and pack around it? Lock it in place.
...etc...
While Quixel and Substance create some amazing art, it's very similar in style and aimed towards realism.
Photoshop sub is about the same price and you're never going to own the damned thing, on the other hand!
I don't know much about handpainted stuff admitedly, not my cup of tea, but I remember seeing a few threads here and there about people doing this kind of stuff with painter.
Now I'll stop derailing this thread sorry.
lods
Sharing texture space across multiple assets
Human readable uvs so you can detail by hand
Specific layouts to support shader effects etx.
There are some of them
Interesting, can you elaborate? I don't get it.
Ditto. A specific example would be great!
See Warren answer about grouping shells in modern packers - I think it covers this use case, let me know if it doesn't.
You mean in Photoshop. I do my 'detailing by hand' in a 3d texturing suite.