UV Packing for lightmaps

Stromberg90

Hi.

I am wondering how you guys pack your lightmaps, I have been using 3ds max auto pack features for a while, but I think it leaves so much padding or does not fill up the space enough.

Being able to turn on padding for the uv borders would also be nice, cause now 3ds max lays the uv's right on top of the border.
I know there are some programs out for this, but a bit sad having to spend so much money only to pack some lightmaps uv's.

So if anyone has any suggestions or tricks that would be cool

Paunescu.Daniel

I use Pack UV's and then adjust the UV islands manually.
You can also set your UV Editor grid to match the resolution of your lightmap. Lets say you will use a 64 res lightmap on the model, then set your grid accordingly, that way every grid cell is a pixel in the lightnap, and you have an idea on the edge padding. Just divide 1 to the lightmap resolution you will use, and punch in that number into the grid spacing option of the UV Editor

Stromberg90

Thanks
I had no idea about the grid spacing, I am wondering is there a way to make the bounding box of the selected uv shell snap to the grid?

Paunescu.Daniel

3ds max snapping features in general are really really stupid. There might be a way but don't expect it to work like you would imagine. Maybe you could manually snap each UV vertex to the grid (in case you have square shapes)

Stromberg90

mm, with square shapes it would work ok, I have never really understood the snapping in the uv window, sometimes I get it to work but mostly not :P

Shuriken UK

The way I do it is just take my diffuse layout, and modify the islands as needed, then just arrange them as neatly as possible, making sure nothing is overlapping. Just a bit of resizing, rotating and moving.

I dont know if this is the "right" way to do things, but it always seems to work for me. Its just a simple, bog-standard method. I've read that so long as you leave atleast 3 pixels of space between islands, you wont get any "leaks". Trouble is, I dont know how to measure the space between islands, in terms of pixels, unless you zoom in SO far that the program starts lagging into another dimension, and sometimes freezes the whole computer lol, so I just try to leave a few mm of visible space.

I agree about the snapping features lol, they just tend to be impossible to work with. Also, none of the hot-keys seem to work in the Unwrap modifier, even though they're apparently supposed to...

Stromberg90

I currently use the same workflow to, except from zooming out until the programs crashes