Maya Pelt Mapping Tool

Husch

There is a new and free pelt mapping tool for maya 6 and 7.

http://sunitparekh.com/pelting/

Looks cool. Has anybody tried it already?

Snowfly

Interactive sliders, niiiice.

Can't use it though, I'm on Maya 4.5.

malcolm

What is pelt mapping exactly? I thought the unfold uv's tool in maya7 did this junk but after examining the link this one looks different?

Snowfly

A pelted zebra

Daz

The concept is that it's a true unwrap, with almost zero stretching, and it's fast. You just select a few borders and hey presto. At least, it's fast as hell in Modo. Haven't played with this but am about to.
The downside is that you can end up with an unwrapped shape that can be somewhat unintuitive to paint on in 2D. Great for 3D painting, not so great If you still do a lot of texture work in Photoshop I don't think. That head unwrap example on the site he has there? There is just no way I could paint on that in Photoshop I don't think. Still, that's a pretty extreme example.

Rhinokey

yea well i've never heard anyone claim that pelt mapping has little stretching usualy it has TONS unlrdd you use it in combo with a relax,

Daz

Nice wording there thanks. Apologies for the 'claim'. I was basing it on what the guy demo-ing Modo told us. I must have misheard him.

Scott Ruggels

Looking at it, Daz, It would be dependent on how you seam the pelt as to how easy or hard it would be to paint on in Photoshop. For instance if you were to slice the back of the head, to a horizontal seam on the forehead that went from temple to temple about the hairline, that would look like what must Head UV layouts looked like, and as for the figure, I would have moved the seams to the undersides of arms and legs, though hw they get the hands so springy is pretty cool

malcolm

Hmmm, I think I can get a better uv map with map uv boarder and relax uv's. I'll stay away from this tool until someone proves me wrong.

sunit

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Hmmm, I think I can get a better uv map with map uv boarder and relax uv's. I'll stay away from this tool until someone proves me wrong.

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take a look at the videos on the site, they show some of the ease of using this kind of method. some users are also using pelting along with the relax tools, and at the moment there are some features, like a uv tweak tool, that are also in development to help with editing uvs in world space.

one of the reasons i kept/keep developing this approach is because it not only allows me to interact with my mesh in world space, but also allows me to see how well the uvs are maintaining face area. in this, the relax tool can be useful in maintaining relative edge lengths, but often i find it doesn't maintain my world space face area (thereby causing shearing), and has problems dealing with "holes" in the mesh.

regards,
sunit

EarthQuake

Modo's uv stuff works great, i wouldnt call it pelt based on what i've seen of pelt mapping stuff from other programs tho i've never actually used and of them. Modo produces very little stretching, but sometimes some very very inconsistant texal ratios( scales stuff up or down to compensate on certain shapes.....) So theres some tweaking you have to do to get it perfect.

Gmanx

[ QUOTE ]
Modo's uv stuff works great, i wouldnt call it pelt based on what i've seen of pelt mapping stuff from other programs tho i've never actually used and of them. Modo produces very little stretching, but sometimes some very very inconsistant texal ratios( scales stuff up or down to compensate on certain shapes.....) So theres some tweaking you have to do to get it perfect.

[/ QUOTE ]

Can you 'pin' certain verts to keep relative scale like you can in blender's LSCM?