UV Packer and some other crap
mod
Found this the other day.
Haven't tried it, just wanted to show you guys.
UV Packer -> http://packer.3d-plugin.com/
Automatic Mapping -> http://www.unwrella.com
Flatiron Robust And Simple Full Scene Unwrapping and Baking Solution
http://flatiron.3d-plugin.com/
Haven't tried it, just wanted to show you guys.
UV Packer -> http://packer.3d-plugin.com/
Automatic Mapping -> http://www.unwrella.com
Flatiron Robust And Simple Full Scene Unwrapping and Baking Solution
http://flatiron.3d-plugin.com/
Replies
I was interested in the UV Packer so I ran a few tests with it.
The results are kinda ok I guess, Its probably a step in the right direction; but by no means a solution to packing as a whole.
If your initial thoughts to this are, "how could it be as good, or better then packing by hand", then you would be right. It isn't as good as packing by hand, but it can give you a good starting place.
Also, if you have to shell out cash for it, atm; I cant see how it would be worth it.
I tried it on two separate meshes.
The first was one I already had nicely unwrapped, and simply ran uv packer to see how badly it messed up my uvs. It seems to have issues sorting out overlapping uvs so it especially didn't work good here. These are the results:
My UVs done by hand:
UV Packer UVs:
The second mesh I tried I decided to use a simple mesh, and pelt map it as they suggest on the website. This time there were no overlapping uvs. It did a better job, and the packing was ok, but again; not nearly as good as packing by hand. I also ran a check this time to compare it to the default packing in 3ds max (recursive packing) and UV Packer out preformed the recursive packing I think, but not by a whole lot. You guys can judge for yourself.
UV Packer Uvs:
Recursive Packing done by default packing in 3ds max:
In my opinion, you will never have a one stop solution for packing because often times you want to take it beyond simply getting clusters squeezed into the uv space as tightly as possible. You want to have Aligned edges both horizontal and vertical, you might not want all clusters to be of the same resolution, and often times it worth distorting a cluster a bit, to get the perfect fit.
I am interested to hear if anyone gets better results then me though. Please post results if you can.
I'm curious how did you manage to make UV mapping which has white (not green) chart borders on some charts? I didn't manage to create it in MAX myself even when I intentionally tried to. UV-Packer made "a mess" out of those white charts while the green ones were fine, otherwise it would have much closer results to your hand made packing. (ie. currently it is not so good in handling concave UV holes - which you have nicely filled manually)
Please keep in mind that packer is still in early beta stage and version 1.0 so there is room for further improvement. Also, it already does the job / saves time for some people. For examples, check out the gallery section on our web page, especially pics 4, 5 and 6.
We think that, even if it packs 50% of your models automatically (we hope to cover more), and the rest with some small amount of manual tweaking on top, it is still worth the money (expected price will be around 79 EU).
Milan "speedy" Bulat
UV-Packer Team
3d-io GmbH
My hope would be that it turns into a standalone tool just like UVlayout, Roadkill or Ultimate Unwrap 3D- so that it more usefull in a general way- beeing compatible with any other 3d application. Maybe even 1 software application that does it all what they have now split into several packages.
That's why I said UV Packer has a hard time dealing with overlapping uvs.
Don't get me wrong, I am impressed with it so far, but if you can get results like I get by arranging by hand; I will be truly floored. That's what would get me shelling out cash for it anyways.
I wouldn't want to work with that and would ask the person in charge of UVmapping that model to redo it (and edit the geometry in some parts to make for better UVs), honestly...