UVPackmaster 3 - GPU accelerated UV packer for Maya and Blender

glukoz

Hi all!

I created this topic for a general discussion on UVPackmaster 3 - GPU accelerated, fully featured UV packer for Maya and Blender.

We have recently released a Maya variant of the packer. Watch a feature reel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ-RIt9uMPw

Website: https://uvpackmaster.com/

Every comment and suggestion is highly welcome 

dimwalker

Hey mate.
Any chance of v3 for max at some point? Is it demand that is too low or some technical difficulties?
TBH, v2 that is available for max, already does everything I ever wanted, but hey, wouldn't mind to play around with new toys

glukoz

Hi!

We started implementing UVPM 3 for 3ds Max but the problem is it turned out that the Max architecture is very unfriendly to UV plugins. That's because the UV editor in 3ds Max is implemented as a modifier. That's why it is not possible to implement any additional functionalities to the UV editor in a plugin. A feature like for example assigning a per-island parameter to currently selected UVs.

That's a real problem as 80% of features in UVPM 3 depend on per-island parameters in some way. So in order to make implementation of the plugin version 3 reasonable we would have to implement a basic UV editor from scratch. That would require a huge amount of work.

Noren

I'd love to see an update as well, but I agree that the current version for Max is already great and understand there might not be a lot of demand.

You can group islands in the UV editor or do name selection sets on a per face basis for editable poly or mesh objects, but both are fairly fleeting.
Another more permanent workaround would be to let people shift UVs in W or to different "UDIM"s in an unused UVW channel to group them or give them priority that way.
Or the user does selections in named modifiers, but that could be lost easily as well. 
All not terribly convenient, but perhaps better than nothing and not as likely to interfere with workflows like changing the material ID or vertex colors.

What I'd like to see is:

The option to allow mirroring of UV-islands and

Set rotation increments on a per island basis, or perhaps offer a checkbox that does a check if several connected vertices have the same U or V value and gives the options to either lock the rotation of those islands or rotate them in 90 degree steps or by a user defined number. The basic idea is to prevent orthogonally oriented straight pieces from being rotated, even if they would fit better between other parts that way.
Could also be used to orient islands orthogonally if you look for straight lines in general, but orienting them so they take up the least space orthogonally propably does the same and is probably done already.


Edit:
So as an example, you could read out the W value to determine size (0-1) or offer a completely open interface/form where the user assigns properties per pre-existing UV channel/"UDIM" pair within your modifier. That would be pretty much indestructible, even if the mesh is changed. At the very least, it could be repaired quickly.
To make it a bit more convenient and since you already have a UV display function, you could add a button next to each defined group to show which UVs it selects or even let the user browse through them with arrow buttons, but none of that is necessary.