3DS Max: Edit UVW: Overlapped UV select.

oXYnary

Edit UVWs -Select Overlapped Polygons.

This will not work with overlapped UVs from making an array of the same sub object.  Is there an actual Select Overlapped UVWs hidden option or a script plugin that does the same thing?

Better yet, is there a reasonable priced packer that respects overlapped UVs?  The max default will of course give mirrored and overlapped pieces their own texture space making it useless.  I'm trying to do 80+ objects at as a Edit UV and its making max grinnnnd doing it by hand.

Eric Chadwick

Look into Groups in the UVW Editor, down in the bottom right.
http://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2019/ENU/?guid=GUID-9E98AEAC-F06F-4FAD-9091-DCD30AC9BB26

oXYnary

Thanks Eric,

Unfortunately that requires me to hand select each and every overlap by hand and make them their own group (dealing with probably 40 islands that are either mirrored over overlapping out of hundreds), which puts me back at  square one.  Not being able to even see what are overlapped UV wise because select overlapped just selects overlapped polygons.

Eric Chadwick

Maybe you can use the Ribbon selection tools to select similar?

Hard to understand the problem without a pic.

oXYnary

Not sure the FBX example area will keep that issue upon export/import, but I have always noticed this in every max version I have used.  Unless its a mirror or overlapped polygons, it many times wont see UV on top of one another.

I was thinking of the selection tool as well, but I have had bad luck with it many times selecting faces or vertices (even with adjusting the options).  It also requires me knowing where all the arrays are.  Im dealing with lots of objects (84), at once, so I can't remember.

poopipe

So
When you uv multiple objects at once, max has no idea what's each object is doing in relation to the others (it basically just applies a separate unwrap to multiple objects)  this is an architectural issue and you're basically screwed afaik. 

Historically I've dealt with this sort of thing by placing a point helper at the origin of each separate object before collapsing them together, doing the unwrap, detaching them if required and copying the transforms back over from the point helpers. 

I usually unwrap objects individually and shift their UVs outside 0-1 before doing this to make things a bit easier to manage.

oXYnary

Thanks Poopipe,

At least now I know the reason why its always done that.  I will try to keep that in mind for future unwraps... and add this the list of why I need to switch to Blender or Modo eventually.

Does anyone remember 09' and below where you could actually weld the overlapping UVs?

Eric Chadwick

You can still weld them, afaik. Just flatten them on W?

gandhics

poopipe said:

So
When you uv multiple objects at once, max has no idea what's each object is doing in relation to the others (it basically just applies a separate unwrap to multiple objects)  this is an architectural issue and you're basically screwed afaik. 

Historically I've dealt with this sort of thing by placing a point helper at the origin of each separate object before collapsing them together, doing the unwrap, detaching them if required and copying the transforms back over from the point helpers. 

I usually unwrap objects individually and shift their UVs outside 0-1 before doing this to make things a bit easier to manage.

I don't think so. If you apply unwrapYVW on multiple object and pack. It packs elements from all objects properly.

You can see from my video. Orogonally each object was unwrapped indivisually. I applied another unwrapuvw and pack it. It even automatically keep texel density across objects. 

Am I missign something?

Eric Chadwick

Yeah, the OP needs to keep overlapped/mirrored pieces locked together during the pack.

Oxy, I'm guessing you inherited a messy model, and you're the one who has to clean up someone else's mess?

I approach overlaps and mirrors by unwrapping all the non mirrored/overlapped pieces first, packing them before duplicating/mirroring around.

That also solves issues with hand-edited overlaps. 

But if I need to repack, everything's already in a pretty orderly layout, so it's easy to use Select Overlapped to find where the elements are than need to be grouped, at which point I just do a crossing select with Element on, then Group.

That still might help in your current situation, just to ID the overlaps, so you can Element select them for Grouping.

But if you've lost the overlapping, gotta go back.

poopipe

gandhics said:

Am I missign something?

whether you are or not - I've not had to deal with this sort of stuff post max 2015 so I'm a bit out of date.  I guess they've gone some of the way to resolving the shortcomings inherent in multi-object unwrapping

oXYnary

Eric Chadwick said:

Yeah, the OP needs to keep overlapped/mirrored pieces locked together during the pack.

Oxy, I'm guessing you inherited a messy model, and you're the one who has to clean up someone else's mess?

No, I'm the cause of my own pain.  In my defense though, I am doing 100+ models at once. (So many in part for low/high Normal map baking so no model cage overlaps).

I'm on 2014 Max still so yea, maybe they have fixed things since then.  But you use what you have.