looking for this tool in maya

malcolm

So there was this tool in max which was for the win like every 2 seconds in the uv editor. It was basically a 4 point lattice on your selected uv's pretty much the same thing as in photoshop when you hit ctrl t and then you can constrain scale your selection using a specific edge as the anchor. Anyone seen this is maya? Maya's uv lattice is lame, no constrain and minimum 9 points.

MoP

Ahh yeah, the free-form transform manipulator. It's awesome.

No, I don't know of anything like that in Maya

I have no idea if something like that is even scriptable in MEL, it sounds more like something you'd need a proper plugin for.

greuh

the friggin sad thing; there is such a tool already in maya (not sure when it was implemented) called the UV Lattice tool. But for a reason that eludes me, you can't configure the lattice with a cage smaller than 3X3, they must have though it wouldn't be useful or something...
I have no idea if there's a way to hack some .mel configuration file somewhere to change the limit to the boundaries.

MoP

Yeah plus like Malcolm said there's no proportional / axis constraints - in Max's tool:
SHIFT + drag = uniform scale
CTRL + drag = axis locked in the direction you're dragging

I may have got CTRL/SHIFT the wrong way round there, but yeah - Maya's Lattice behaves more like Photoshop's Warp tool ... and it's not useful in all but a few rare cases.

greuh

I actually just went and dig some and found this file: C: \Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2009\scripts\others\performTextureLatticeOptions.mel

in it, I was able to change the boundaries for the lattice columns and rows and set the minimum to 2 instead of 3.

Before:

intSliderGrp -edit
-value
-min 3
-max 8
texLatticeDeformRows;

intSliderGrp -edit
-min 3
-max 8
-value
texLatticeDeformColumns;

After:

intSliderGrp -edit
-value
-min 2
-max 8
texLatticeDeformRows;

intSliderGrp -edit
-min 2
-max 8
-value
texLatticeDeformColumns;

After restarting Maya I was able to create a 2x2 lattice which seemed to actually work. I didn't spent too much time testing.
The real question now is if there was any technical limitation that forced the crazy folks @autodesk to set it to a minimum of 3 in the first place.


Obviously I don't recommend doing this to a production installation, but it definitely opens possibilities.
One might be tempted to implement the shift/control modifier behavior

renderhjs

maybe go a different route, swap UVW with XYZ channel and morph/ tweak the UV-mesh in the viewport and once done swap it back- thats how I do that kind of stuff in max and some scripts.

solar

I would love to have this tool in maya! Watching this thread closely...

fade1

i have a workaround for this:
- select vertices
- select your tool, in your case scale("r"), but rotate or move works fine, too.
- press insert for pivot mode
- move pivot with snap to vertex(press "v") or grid(press "x") to your scale origin
- press insert again to go back to your tool
-> now you can scale or rotate like with the max gizmo

not as good as the max tool, but at least usable.

malcolm

fade1, sorry I forgot to mention we're stuck in maya2008 until next year so no uv pivot point snapping for the fail. Just tried this at home works great I'll just use that when we upgrade to 2009/2010 next year.

fade1

yeah right, i'm working with maya2010. i thought i did the same thing with maya 7.0 last year. i'm gonna check this.

MoP

Eh? I'm on 2008 Extension 2 at work and UV pivot snapping (to UVs or the grid) works fine, malcolm...

malcolm

Mop we don't even have extension 2, for reasons I can't discuss publicly.

malcolm

greuh, sorry I just got around to trying this works great! Is there any way to rip this out into its own tool so I don't lose script when I get a new version of maya.