Deep UV? Is standard 3dS unwrap crap?

ChaosEidolon

Ive heard a lot of people singing Deep UVs praises, but is it really that much of a time saver as compared to MAX's UV tools?
Im using max 8 and theyve added a ton of new tools, incl the new relaxing tool ,which i understand is the major draw of deep UV.

So is it worth checking out or has MAX closed the gap with it's tools?

PS: UVs are the bane of my existance right now, so if anyone knows of a good tut on it, id love to hear about it.


Thanks dudes

poopinmymouth

3dsmax 8 with uvHelp, from www.microcan.nl covers pretty much anything DeepUV had going for it. If you do want a good 3rd party app that works better than the max tools, try unfold 3d magic, www.unfold3d.com

skankerzero

I use Max and UVHelp 2.01. Whenever I hit something that UVHelp can't handle, I switch over to DeepUV, which is a bit more accurate in my book.

I also use DeepUV as a quick way to resize all my UVs to the same textel density before I begin packing them.

DeepUV is expensive though, especially for what I use it for.

They save lots of time, lots.

MoP

How is uvHelp better than Max8's default unfolding tools? I find they cover pretty much anything very well indeed with only minor tweaks to the settings.

poopinmymouth

I still haven't been able to replicate the same level of accuracy with Max 8's settings that I can with one click of UVhelp. Besides which, it's free and works in max 7,6,5.

skankerzero

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I still haven't been able to replicate the same level of accuracy with Max 8's settings that I can with one click of UVhelp. Besides which, it's free and works in max 7,6,5.



[/ QUOTE ]

Yup.

I still model in Max 6 because I hate hate hate the snap tool in 7 and 8.

ChaosEidolon

Thanks for the info guys. Im gonna go check that UVhelp plug in out tonight, sounds like it might ease my woes a bit.

Eric Chadwick

I'm with jesse on DeepUV there. If my UVs are extreme, like huge chunks for minimizing seams, UVHelp or Max's relax will twist some of the edges around and around, but DeepUV handles them OK. If the mesh has acute angles in geometry space, Max/UVHelp both give me trouble.

FatAssasin

I took Poop's advice a while ago a got my company to purchase Unfold3D. It's super fast and accurate. Plus, they have a Max plugin version now so you don't have to export your meshes to unwrap them. It does have it's own quirks, but overall it's a great program.

poopinmymouth

FatAssasin, be looking out this weekend for my latest video tutorial to go live on my site, it's on how to use Unfold3d. It might help ease the learning process for new hires or what not. Glad to know of another convert!

Sa74n

poop showed unfold3d to me when he was in germany and it looked like quite a nice tool, mainly for organics though. for environment models the standart unwrapping tools usually do everything i need
looking forward to your tutorial though!

Ryno

Yeah, as an environment artist, I've yet to find anything that I can't do fairly quickly with Max's default UV tools.