Lightwave Unwrapper Plugin

Frankie

Hey guys, I found this unwrap plugin for lightwave and I though I should share it!

http://homepage2.nifty.com/nif-hp/index2_english.htm

It adds in automatic unwrapping defined by boundery edges, theres also a relax and a packer. Don't anyone from other 3d apps laugh!

James Edwards

Haha!

Frankie

shut it

James Edwards

Actually I heard it was a pretty good toolset that definitely fills a gap in LW's UV tools. So yay for LW! =]

Frankie

Oh man, what else do you know that you haven't been telling me?

malcolm

The cow example is very nice. I'm going to try out Maya 8 today as they have apparently improved their auto pack feature, I wonder if our CG sup can get this functionality working in Maya. Uv atlas is pretty much shit.

http://homepage2.nifty.com/nif-hp/lw_plugin/pack_uv_chart_abs_english.htm

James Edwards

My fave: www.uvlayout.com

James Edwards

Hey frankie have you tried the LWCAD tools? Not sure if are doing a lot of enviro or hard surface work... it's a pretty badass modeling plugin. http://www.wtools3d.com/

malcolm

Not interested in seamless character unwraps I need a better packer for lightmapping, Gwot does that tool do a good job of packing many shells which have weird shapes?

James Edwards

It doesn't pack yet. Basically the uv space grows or shrinks depending on your layout - or you can lock it. Packing has been requested though so it will probably make it in soon judging by how fast he updates the thing with peoples requests. It started out more as an organic tool but recently people have been putting it to use for other things and requesting more diversity. I think it will be a great all around UV tool when it finally hits 1.0... for now though it's a badass organic uv tool.

malcolm

Problem solved Maya8 now uses the shape of the uv shell instead of the bounding box, automap and auto pack make for really nice lightmap unwraps with minimal hand tweaking.

Frankie

I saw the cad plugin a while ago, it does look really cool but I dont think I would use it much.

Have you tried lw9 yet?

James Edwards

I have it installed as I paid for the upgrade, but that's about it. I'm still using 8.5 for doing stuff with the PIM plugin. 9 doesn't really offer me anything I need. I've moved all of my rigging and animation work over to XSI and our whole DS pipeline is pretty much XSI now, with a few people still using LW for modeling work.