I have not tried the packer yet, but I have a "maybe stupid" question before purchasing it.
Is it possible to have some UV shells with a lower resolution? I´m thinking of viewblockers and inside polygons that need less texture resolution than other areas.
So do I scale them down and then run the packer and everything gets scaled evenly?? Or how does it work?
I have not tried the packer yet, but I have a "maybe stupid" question before purchasing it.
Is it possible to have some UV shells with a lower resolution? I´m thinking of viewblockers and inside polygons that need less texture resolution than other areas.
So do I scale them down and then run the packer and everything gets scaled evenly?? Or how does it work?
Thanks!
all uv shells are scaled down together so far. to achieve this, you have to scale down those uv island before uploading to ipackthat or scale down those uv island within the tool before start to pack.
So... how do I get the new version? On my Windows 10 machine iPackThat doesn't really run (I'm thinking it's probably the "thread error with check updates") to update itself and Gumroad still has the old version.
Just a couple of question regarding the program, as we're thoroughly impressed by the packing solutions your program manages to create ( seems to be leagues ahead of other solutions we've tried.) Is there a commercial standalone version available for sale (not relying on Steam?) Does the program allow for commandline / headless mode input, so it can be incorporated into our pipeline? More ideally, are there any plans to create an integrated solution for Maya/Max?
Hi Snoelk, when I try and use the demo for my model it crashes when I click pack. I made no severe changes and just imported the model and clicked pack, which abruptly crashes every time I try too use. Edit: Did some tests on why this wasn't working, I tried each separate object of the model in question and they are all causing crashes. However when I use a different model, one I already packed, the program works. I am exporting in .obj for both models, and I tried FBX for the broken model, which to no avail, did not work.So if this information can help you that'd be awesome. Edit2: I believe I fixed the problem. The thing is, that when there were a lot of UV islands, when you had overlapping of UV islands, it caused the crash. Now that I have no overlapping UVs, it does not crash, which is great! However I still think that in the future it should be updated, it is now currently packing.
I just purchased IPackThat from gumroad and I cannot get it to run.
I'm on windows 7, I ran the installer as admin as per the instructions. Then launched it, it prompted me for a key which I entered, it accepted it and a dialog opened quickly that said "Loading" and then it disppeared. Nothing. No application. This happens every time I run it.
If I look at my processes in windows task manager it shows IPackThat.exe as running. But nothing ever appears.
Edit: Managed to get it working by using the zipped version rather than the installer.
iPackThat doesn't seem to be respecting the Rotate checkbox being unchecked. I also tried selecting the shells I don't want rotated and disabling rotation from the right-click menu. Any ideas?
I'm using this with MODO and Farfarer's iPackThat script -- loving it!
I could instakl it and use the license key, but I cannot start it. for not even a second there is a small loading screen and then nothing. The task manager shows a ipackthat process, but there´s nothing.
Using WIndows 7.
Any help?
edit: it is running now : )
What am I doing wrong? I get terrible overlaps, the single UV islands do not get rotated and... I dunno : /
+ I can not import the saved fbx from ipackthat into max.
@C86GWhat do your UVs look like before importing them?
Make sure that the islands you want to be separate are separated with space in between them before import. I am not 100% sure what's happening but I believe that it packs it with the same UV overlaps that you import, I'm guessing that this is so that if you have mirrored or cloned geometry it will retain that information when packing.
Sorry if this sounds like a dumb question but I'm not really wrapping my head around how it saves time. Unless i'm not utilizing the tools this application's features.
So I unwrap my model in Maya, bring it into IpackThis and it just packs the UVS even if they're overlapped. So going into Maya to separate the overlapping and i'm just in essence packing my own UVs again. Certain islands are scaled above proportion for unique UV space, and I have to do that manually in Maya, but if it's overlaid on another Island it'll get packed that way too.. So what's the point? Seems like I'm just packing them myself to get ready for IpackThis which isn't saving me time.
Again, I just started mulling with this, I haven't found many tuts online so I took to the forum. I'm sure I'm missing something, but I would love some guidance.
Lastly, is there an option to see distortion on the UV's?
Hope not. It's still not working properly for quite a few people.
It's so close to being essential but the missing features have kept me (and the teams at both studios) from using it exclusively to pack. A bit disappointing.
still working on implementing the core in c++. its a heavy task. i have to redesign the core pipeline and core classes so i can use them with c++ amp or intrinsics or direct gpu compute shader approach. all those things takes more time than simple c# *g* but it will run ALOT faster then. sorry for all the delays. There is also a problem with a third party library i want to use for triangulate shapes. Still waiting for a response from a university if i can use this lib.
will upload some small bugfixes for gumroad, steam and commercial.
hope fix for uhd monitors and correct mouse position ( don't own a uhd monitor so i implemented the examples from microsoft about dpi usage )
fixed a problem with pack preperation when uv islands are outside the working area.
fixed the annoying max run count 0 problem
fixed the comparsion image
additionally i will add a commercial version on gumroad as well.
I love capable programmers making amazing quality of life enhancement tools. Even though it was meant to be a productivity tool, it's actually really fun to use.
Dat moment when you tab back and see a new solution has been found and you're like WOW such efficiency! :P
The tool is working really fine here, thanks for this great tool
I am just having some issues with the overlapping meshes, when I use the option to send it back after the uv it only moves part of the islands and part of other islands that were not overlapping
Is it a common issue or it is something I am doing wrong on my side?
UPDATE the problem was happening using OBJ export on maya 2016, using fbx and exporting as 2014/2015 format seam to fixed the issue Thanks
Sorry if this sounds like a dumb question but I'm not really wrapping my head around how it saves time. Unless i'm not utilizing the tools this application's features.
So I unwrap my model in Maya, bring it into IpackThis and it just packs the UVS even if they're overlapped. So going into Maya to separate the overlapping and i'm just in essence packing my own UVs again. Certain islands are scaled above proportion for unique UV space, and I have to do that manually in Maya, but if it's overlaid on another Island it'll get packed that way too.. So what's the point? Seems like I'm just packing them myself to get ready for IpackThis which isn't saving me time.
Again, I just started mulling with this, I haven't found many tuts online so I took to the forum. I'm sure I'm missing something, but I would love some guidance.
Lastly, is there an option to see distortion on the UV's?
iPackthat has A LOT of settings and you have to make sure you understand them all before you will get results you don't have to adjust very much.
For example: When you import your mesh, you can choose to ignore the overlap check. If you do this, then it will pack overlapped islands individually. If you don't check this then it will pack overlapped islands together.
Each island has it's own settings. You can group islands to keep them together in the uv layout. You can also flag islands to not scale or rotate.
You shouldn't have to pack your own uvs before going into this software, just make sure they are not overlapping unless you want them to be, and scale them how you want to scale them.
It's usefulness is also directly related to the complexity of your model. If your model is very low poly, then it's not very useful if you have few uv islands. I absolutely love packing my own uvs, but this tool has saved me a ton of time. I never get the settings correct on my first try, so I do have to run my model through the software several times before I hit the sweet spot, but in the end, even if I spend 30 minutes in this software, it still saves me hours. (My uv layouts are extremely complex)
My pipeline: Model in Max Export obj unwrap in UVLayout Import back to Max to tweak scale and overlaps Export fbx Pack in IPackThat Import back to Max for any final uv tweaks
Is it possible to batch pack? Lets say I had 10 fbx's, is it possible for me to plug all 10 in, head home and get in the next day with all 10 files well packed?
Is it possible to batch pack? Lets say I had 10 fbx's, is it possible for me to plug all 10 in, head home and get in the next day with all 10 files well packed?
If not, this seems like a fantastic feature! Set a pack percentage limit or a time limit or both on each pack, select your fbx's, let run, have it finished overnight.
Just want to chime in and say thanks for the awesome work you've done on IPackThat! I do have a couple of questions though -
1) So this is a big issue I've run into that at times can make this software unusable. My selection marquee does not line up with my mouse at all, I've included a gif to show you what I mean:
2) Is there an option that allows the shells to be scaled up in order to fit the space better? This is especially relevant to Lightmap uvs, where generally... 1:1 shell scaling isn't as important.
3) Like others who have brought this up, I also have the issue where the packing doesn't actually fill in all the spaces. I can counter this bu scaling up the shells in the Cluster Settings tab, but I'm wondering if I'm doing anything incorrect?
4) Is there any proper documentation for this software? I'm ok with paying $79.99 for a piece of kickass software... but the lack of documentation / tutorial videos makes that $79.99 kinda hard to swallow.
I've tried this demo a couple of times with various objects and it worked fine, but when I've tried importing something a bit bigger like an object made of 10k of polys (~300 of UV islands) I kept getting a message about UV errors. It didn't import UV coordinates. I've checked if UV map was there by importing the very same fbx file into Substance Painter and it did show my UV layout. Have You had any similar problems guys? (btw. I've used Blender 2.76 and FBX 7.4)
Just a follow up to my selection issue posted above, I think I've found what is causing it... and I'm hoppping it's not too hard to fix.
So basically, I set my text / screen size to 125% (to be a bit nicer to my eyes) and because of this, it seems to be affecting working area of the cursor as well. This is probably a niche bug, but any chance this could be addressed? (pretty please).
4) Is there any proper documentation for this software? I'm ok with paying $79.99 for a piece of kickass software... but the lack of documentation / tutorial videos makes that $79.99 kinda hard to swallow.
There's a PDF in the install directory. It also has a support email which is probably a better place to send bugs since it doesn't seem like the dev checks this thread regularly.
Edit: Just a note, I am using the zipped version from gumroad. Documentation might be in a different place if you bought the steam version.
Sorry if this sounds like a dumb question but I'm not really wrapping my head around how it saves time. Unless i'm not utilizing the tools this application's features.
So I unwrap my model in Maya, bring it into IpackThis and it just packs the UVS even if they're overlapped. So going into Maya to separate the overlapping and i'm just in essence packing my own UVs again. Certain islands are scaled above proportion for unique UV space, and I have to do that manually in Maya, but if it's overlaid on another Island it'll get packed that way too.. So what's the point? Seems like I'm just packing them myself to get ready for IpackThis which isn't saving me time.
Again, I just started mulling with this, I haven't found many tuts online so I took to the forum. I'm sure I'm missing something, but I would love some guidance.
Lastly, is there an option to see distortion on the UV's?
iPackthat has A LOT of settings and you have to make sure you understand them all before you will get results you don't have to adjust very much.
For example: When you import your mesh, you can choose to ignore the overlap check. If you do this, then it will pack overlapped islands individually. If you don't check this then it will pack overlapped islands together.
Each island has it's own settings. You can group islands to keep them together in the uv layout. You can also flag islands to not scale or rotate.
You shouldn't have to pack your own uvs before going into this software, just make sure they are not overlapping unless you want them to be, and scale them how you want to scale them.
It's usefulness is also directly related to the complexity of your model. If your model is very low poly, then it's not very useful if you have few uv islands. I absolutely love packing my own uvs, but this tool has saved me a ton of time. I never get the settings correct on my first try, so I do have to run my model through the software several times before I hit the sweet spot, but in the end, even if I spend 30 minutes in this software, it still saves me hours. (My uv layouts are extremely complex)
My pipeline: Model in Max Export obj unwrap in UVLayout Import back to Max to tweak scale and overlaps Export fbx Pack in IPackThat Import back to Max for any final uv tweaks
thanks a lot for this quick overview, skankerzero!
Just want to chime in and say thanks for the awesome work you've done on IPackThat! I do have a couple of questions though -
1) So this is a big issue I've run into that at times can make this software unusable. My selection marquee does not line up with my mouse at all, I've included a gif to show you what I mean:
2) Is there an option that allows the shells to be scaled up in order to fit the space better? This is especially relevant to Lightmap uvs, where generally... 1:1 shell scaling isn't as important.
3) Like others who have brought this up, I also have the issue where the packing doesn't actually fill in all the spaces. I can counter this bu scaling up the shells in the Cluster Settings tab, but I'm wondering if I'm doing anything incorrect?
4) Is there any proper documentation for this software? I'm ok with paying $79.99 for a piece of kickass software... but the lack of documentation / tutorial videos makes that $79.99 kinda hard to swallow.
Hello. I understand the process that is in action when you make "n" Groups in IPT, but can you add a priority to treat all the clusters of the Group 1 first, then the Group 2 etc.... cause at that time group just tries to regroup a group of cluster in their own UV space, so at that time there is Overlap all the time. Do i'm doing wrong ?
Really loving this software! But not sure if this is normal what i am running into. Sometimes when I pack meshes with a lot of clusters - I get these seemingly uneven texel sized uvs. In this instance, a small box shaped mesh is huge on the uv sheet, but the more important, round pieces are getting very little texel space. However, when I bring it back into Max and hit rescale - nothing happens, meaning its apparently 1:1.
Just recently bought IpackThat on steam.Finding it a great tool so far.I had a few Ideas for feature requests.Ive posted them on the steam forums and thought I could post them here to.
1 the ability to save coloured cluster goup image as a texture without visible wire frame.This could be used as an ID map for surface painter or quixel.
2 the ability to selet an area of the uv space and have the uvs pack to that area only.
3 the ability to lock the positon of any given cluster and have the remaining uvs pack around this.
5 It would be great to have a 3d view of the model with the option to change between a checkerd textured view and coloured uv groups view.
@PolyHertz yes, and even tried combining all meshes into one (undesirable for me atm, as i need them to be split apart with naming conventions) and still same result.
Hi. Tried use this awesome software, but for me it works really slow. Like 1 piece of geometry per 30sec. Sometime it accelerated for 10-20 pieces but then again slows down to an unacceptable rate. Any suggestion?
Hi. Tried use this awesome software, but for me it works really slow. Like 1 piece of geometry per 30sec. Sometime it accelerated for 10-20 pieces but then again slows down to an unacceptable rate. Any suggestion?
Do you mind showing one packing result, just to see what Kind of Shells your are dealing with.
Do you mind showing one packing result, just to see what Kind of Shells your are dealing with.
Here is nothing special. A lot of pretty even junks. This is UV's imput to IPackThat. But I has no image of UV's output. Just because it was pretty long process, like 40min or something and i only once waited for final result. But if necessary, I can show you later IPackThat outcome.
Hey guys. Just purchased this recently. In case any of you have issues with packing with "merge clusters" where you've pre-packed some geometry and you'd like to keep it the same and get nasty overlapping issues, or the convex mesh not working correctly I have found a workaround ( no ideea if this has been posted before): For the clusters you want to keep together ( pre-packed) create a 3x3 plane, delete inner edges, while keeping outer vertexez there. In the uv layout of your desired software, just move the mask vertexez to cover your clusters. Export, import in ipackthat and skip overlapping check ( this uses the overlapping funtionality, for better packing), pack it, voila, you have your pre-packet clusters intact and everything packed in tightly. In the end just delete the mesh geometry.
Does anyone know how to stop IPackThat from welding overlapping UV islands on top of each other? When I reimport the uv'd object into max I found any islands overlapping have welded themselves together. Can't bake at all with this stuff. I've tried toggling the import overlap settings, I have also tried importing the mesh with the overlapped UVs shifted and toggling the various import options. None of those have worked for me. I remember in previous versions of IPackThat that it never welded overlapped faces on default settings.
EDIT: Whops, don't know how I missed this but I had texture coordinates checked under Optimize in the obj export. Uncheck that and it won't weld the islands on export!
Snoelk has been providing support, but the tool is not quite there yet. What is there is pretty awesome though, so it's pretty frustrating that it's not 100% ready. As Beefaroni said earlier in the thread:
It's so close to being essential but the missing features have kept me (and the teams at both studios) from using it exclusively to pack. A bit disappointing.
I'm definitely experiencing an issue with stacked UVs - occasionally UVPacker will create duplicated geometry of UVs that are stacked, triangulated, with no vertex welding. It keeps the original geometry which makes it simple to clean up, but worth noting for future fixes.
Replies
I have not tried the packer yet, but I have a "maybe stupid" question before purchasing it.
Is it possible to have some UV shells with a lower resolution?
I´m thinking of viewblockers and inside polygons that need less texture resolution than other areas.
So do I scale them down and then run the packer and everything gets scaled evenly?? Or how does it work?
Thanks!
A new update has arrived.
Fixed some thread errors and minor fixes.
Here a detailed list of the changes
will upload a new installer/zip to gumroad tomorrow too
Awesome! Do you also have the commercial version on Gumroad?
Is there a commercial standalone version available for sale (not relying on Steam?)
Does the program allow for commandline / headless mode input, so it can be incorporated into our pipeline?
More ideally, are there any plans to create an integrated solution for Maya/Max?
kind regards,
Sven
Edit: Did some tests on why this wasn't working, I tried each separate object of the model in question and they are all causing crashes. However when I use a different model, one I already packed, the program works. I am exporting in .obj for both models, and I tried FBX for the broken model, which to no avail, did not work.So if this information can help you that'd be awesome.
Edit2: I believe I fixed the problem. The thing is, that when there were a lot of UV islands, when you had overlapping of UV islands, it caused the crash. Now that I have no overlapping UVs, it does not crash, which is great! However I still think that in the future it should be updated, it is now currently packing.
I am using lots of groups. Some UVs were outside of 0-1 space on import. Some UVs were overlapped, including those outside of 0-1 space.
I've made the mesh available on Dropbox. It's an .obj file.
Dropbox Link
I'm using this with MODO and Farfarer's iPackThat script -- loving it!
I could instakl it and use the license key, but I cannot start it. for not even a second there is a small loading screen and then nothing.
The task manager shows a ipackthat process, but there´s nothing.
Using WIndows 7.
Any help?
edit: it is running now : )
What am I doing wrong?
I get terrible overlaps, the single UV islands do not get rotated and... I dunno : /
+ I can not import the saved fbx from ipackthat into max.
So I unwrap my model in Maya, bring it into IpackThis and it just packs the UVS even if they're overlapped. So going into Maya to separate the overlapping and i'm just in essence packing my own UVs again. Certain islands are scaled above proportion for unique UV space, and I have to do that manually in Maya, but if it's overlaid on another Island it'll get packed that way too.. So what's the point? Seems like I'm just packing them myself to get ready for IpackThis which isn't saving me time.
Again, I just started mulling with this, I haven't found many tuts online so I took to the forum. I'm sure I'm missing something, but I would love some guidance.
Lastly, is there an option to see distortion on the UV's?
still working on implementing the core in c++. its a heavy task.
i have to redesign the core pipeline and core classes so i can use them with c++ amp or intrinsics or direct gpu compute shader approach.
all those things takes more time than simple c# *g*
but it will run ALOT faster then. sorry for all the delays.
There is also a problem with a third party library i want to use for triangulate shapes. Still waiting for a response from a university if i can use this lib.
will upload some small bugfixes for gumroad, steam and commercial.
- hope fix for uhd monitors and correct mouse position ( don't own a uhd monitor so i implemented the examples from microsoft about dpi usage )
- fixed a problem with pack preperation when uv islands are outside the working area.
- fixed the annoying max run count 0 problem
- fixed the comparsion image
additionally i will add a commercial version on gumroad as well.Even though it was meant to be a productivity tool, it's actually really fun to use.
Dat moment when you tab back and see a new solution has been found and you're like WOW such efficiency! :P
The tool is working really fine here, thanks for this great tool
I am just having some issues with the overlapping meshes, when I use the option to send it back after the uv it only moves part of the islands and part of other islands that were not overlapping
Is it a common issue or it is something I am doing wrong on my side?
UPDATE
the problem was happening using OBJ export on maya 2016, using fbx and exporting as 2014/2015 format seam to fixed the issue
Thanks
For example:
When you import your mesh, you can choose to ignore the overlap check. If you do this, then it will pack overlapped islands individually. If you don't check this then it will pack overlapped islands together.
Each island has it's own settings. You can group islands to keep them together in the uv layout. You can also flag islands to not scale or rotate.
You shouldn't have to pack your own uvs before going into this software, just make sure they are not overlapping unless you want them to be, and scale them how you want to scale them.
It's usefulness is also directly related to the complexity of your model. If your model is very low poly, then it's not very useful if you have few uv islands. I absolutely love packing my own uvs, but this tool has saved me a ton of time. I never get the settings correct on my first try, so I do have to run my model through the software several times before I hit the sweet spot, but in the end, even if I spend 30 minutes in this software, it still saves me hours. (My uv layouts are extremely complex)
Also, for uv distortion, use UVLayout by Headous.
https://www.uvlayout.com/
My pipeline:
Model in Max
Export obj
unwrap in UVLayout
Import back to Max to tweak scale and overlaps
Export fbx
Pack in IPackThat
Import back to Max for any final uv tweaks
Set a pack percentage limit or a time limit or both on each pack, select your fbx's, let run, have it finished overnight.
1) So this is a big issue I've run into that at times can make this software unusable. My selection marquee does not line up with my mouse at all, I've included a gif to show you what I mean:
2) Is there an option that allows the shells to be scaled up in order to fit the space better? This is especially relevant to Lightmap uvs, where generally... 1:1 shell scaling isn't as important.
3) Like others who have brought this up, I also have the issue where the packing doesn't actually fill in all the spaces. I can counter this bu scaling up the shells in the Cluster Settings tab, but I'm wondering if I'm doing anything incorrect?
4) Is there any proper documentation for this software? I'm ok with paying $79.99 for a piece of kickass software... but the lack of documentation / tutorial videos makes that $79.99 kinda hard to swallow.
Thanks!
So basically, I set my text / screen size to 125% (to be a bit nicer to my eyes) and because of this, it seems to be affecting working area of the cursor as well. This is probably a niche bug, but any chance this could be addressed? (pretty please).
Thanks!
Edit: Just a note, I am using the zipped version from gumroad. Documentation might be in a different place if you bought the steam version.
I love this tool
Any clue whats going on here? Thank you!
1 the ability to save coloured cluster goup image as a texture without visible wire frame.This could be used as an ID map for surface painter or quixel.
2 the ability to selet an area of the uv space and have the uvs pack to that area only.
3 the ability to lock the positon of any given cluster and have the remaining uvs pack around this.
5 It would be great to have a 3d view of the model with the option to change between a checkerd textured view and coloured uv groups view.
great uv tool .look forward to any updates.
Any news about that
Do you mind showing one packing result, just to see what Kind of Shells your are dealing with.
But if necessary, I can show you later IPackThat outcome.
Just purchased this recently. In case any of you have issues with packing with "merge clusters" where you've pre-packed some geometry and you'd like to keep it the same and get nasty overlapping issues, or the convex mesh not working correctly I have found a workaround ( no ideea if this has been posted before):
For the clusters you want to keep together ( pre-packed) create a 3x3 plane, delete inner edges, while keeping outer vertexez there. In the uv layout of your desired software, just move the mask vertexez to cover your clusters. Export, import in ipackthat and skip overlapping check ( this uses the overlapping funtionality, for better packing), pack it, voila, you have your pre-packet clusters intact and everything packed in tightly. In the end just delete the mesh geometry.
EDIT: Whops, don't know how I missed this but I had texture coordinates checked under Optimize in the obj export. Uncheck that and it won't weld the islands on export!