Maya + Roadkill - preview stretching, but use Maya UV tools?
Hi!
Like the title says, I am looking for a way to preview the texture stretching (the red, green and blue display in Roadkill), but use the Maya UV tools at the same time. Roadkill is nice for cutting stuff and viewing the stretching, but I prefer to use the relax tool in Maya 2014 and some other functions of the Maya Uv editor.
The best thing I could do was Unfold in RK, switch to Maya UV tools, use what I needed and start Roadkill again to see the stretching. Isn't it somehow possible to just view the stretched polygons in my regular editor?
I'm surprised this feature is still missing, as it would be a huge help and visual aid. I really can't code much, but would it be possible to make a Mel or Pythonscript that shows the stretching directly on the mesh? If it was in a decent price range, like 10-15$ I would even buy a useful script like that.
Thanks for reading + replies! Oh, and if you have suggestions or workarounds to the problem, I'd be curious to hear them. The only thing I can think about is applying a checker, but that doesn't tell me much about whether my polys are compressed or stretched.
Like the title says, I am looking for a way to preview the texture stretching (the red, green and blue display in Roadkill), but use the Maya UV tools at the same time. Roadkill is nice for cutting stuff and viewing the stretching, but I prefer to use the relax tool in Maya 2014 and some other functions of the Maya Uv editor.
The best thing I could do was Unfold in RK, switch to Maya UV tools, use what I needed and start Roadkill again to see the stretching. Isn't it somehow possible to just view the stretched polygons in my regular editor?
I'm surprised this feature is still missing, as it would be a huge help and visual aid. I really can't code much, but would it be possible to make a Mel or Pythonscript that shows the stretching directly on the mesh? If it was in a decent price range, like 10-15$ I would even buy a useful script like that.
Thanks for reading + replies! Oh, and if you have suggestions or workarounds to the problem, I'd be curious to hear them. The only thing I can think about is applying a checker, but that doesn't tell me much about whether my polys are compressed or stretched.
Replies
Edit:
oh well, sorry,but I went through on the last part as just looking but not seeing, but yeah that would be the workaround, and it works perfectly, just use it. If the checker shows even squares then you are good
( except if you are going with 1:2 or 2:1 or any other uneven side proportions)
About including features: Max users had to wait about 5-7 or more years to get quad chamfer so I wouldn't want too much from the developers even if this sounds harsh. But you can always get plugins or use very simple workarounds like this checker map thing
What I am looking for is basically what Headus has. When you move a vertex that is between a compressed and a stretched polygon you can see it change color, until both are equalized. This is a bit more advanced than what the checker can do for me.
For now I just applied the checker and ignore slight stretching, as long as the texture looks alright on most of the model.
The other workaround would be to bake all the maps or almost all the maps from the highpoly.
I don't have it installed, but Maya 2015 has a stretch visualization shader.
This is not to scale yet (started scene today), but the isue was/is getting these rounded parts to revolve around a square center part without distortion. And it doesn't really look like I want, yet:
It's just a placeholder texture for now. Final tiling and size will be done in Unreal 4 (shader), but these Uvs aren't completely evenly stretched it seems. There is a slight waviness to some of them.
In that case the distortion is actually wanted, since you are bending the texture on purpose.
If you want to increase the quality of it you would need more geo, to even out the distortion on more uvs/verts.
Persnally I prefer to just use a tileing texture to see distortion, since I can see where it is in acceptable places, or in this case where it is acceptable. You can't do that with a distortion shader or visualiser.
Tl;Dr try to use more sides in the cylebder with your unwrap to a straight UV shell, and it should work and be more smooth.
The cylebder? Heheh, sorry about that. You really helped here, as I was pondering the problem in my head and it seems impossible to apply a straight texture to a triangle shape without some distortion.
However, you just made me wonder about something. How about I double the subdivision, then make the projection as even as possible and then start removing subdivision while "preserve Uvs" is ticked on? This should keep the projection straight, while reducing the polycount. Would be wicked, if this works. I'm gonna try tomorrow. Thanks for the inspiration!
Like passerby said try a bit more geometry to limit distortion, it will always be there to some extent, and actually changes depending on which way a quad is triangulated, but it will be less noticeable with some more geometry
As for subdividing and then removing with preserve UVs on, I'm not sure what that would accomplish. Mapping stuff like this, you want a straight strip of polygons, and all that would do is remove the UVs and leave you where you started.
An easy non script way for mapping stuff like this, is to select the faces in the strip then do polygons-unitize in the UV texture editor, then select the whole edge ring, deselect a loop where you want the seam, and sew all of that together. You end up with a strip that you can scale to get the proportions right.
Subdividing than removing verts won't help, since when you got more geo, it helps by spreading out the distortion along more verts so each one contains less distortion.
What is wrong with just using a few more sides? Extra Poly's are cheap. Maybe 32 sides, and add one or two edge loops to the cap.
Yeah, it's true, I was hoping the Uv would somehow magically turn to something straight; also; I was quite tired and had ideas closer to dreams than to reality ^^
Alright, I'll double the subdivision. It's just a bloody floor, so I didn't want to spend too much on it. But yeah, the outside parts have to look better, so I guess I'll have to.
Also, I didn't mean to sound like a grammar nazi, I thought it was cute.
I'll post updates soon, busy painting eggs all day.
He, I tried out your Uv method m4adcow, it's a good idea, thanks.