My UV workflow has a problem

achillesian

So, i have found since i have started learning maya and zbrush that laying out UV's is one of the hardest parts (for me, hardest next to rigging), and often i just skip over the manual laying by using auto tiling in zbrush, but theres of course many reasons not to do this, and i have recently been doing it manually instead.

I've been using a UV layout program called unfold 3d, and its great for the most part, just a simple pelt creating program where i select the edges for the little UV islands and keep cutting till there's no, or little distortion.

however, this program (my version at least) does not have a symmetry feature, so i have to do both sides by hand and try and match them up, if its a symmetrical model, plus if i do a normal or texture which happens to be symmetrical i'm wasting alot of space by have 2 shells which have the same texture.

I'm trying to fix this here:


How do i make these ALMOST identical uv islands match up perfectly so i can scale them up and put them in a good place and waste last space, since i'm making a symmetrical normal/texture

jocose

Is this what your after?: http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/texturing/c/muvsnap

achillesian

this should help, i put it in the script directory and tried typing the name of the script into the mel window but that didnt work

how do i make it work

glib

The usual way to do this is to delete half your model, uv what remains, then mirror the model across again. Then select your new uvs on the one half and offset them by 1.0 in the U if you're going to be baking it. This is so there are no overlapping UVs in 0 to 1 space which will cause baking errors, but the right parts of the mesh are still using the appropriate areas of the texture.

achillesian

okay thanks glib that sounds more conventional, i think i know how to do everything you said besides the offset by 1.0 thing, is that necessary and or possible in maya 2009

jocose

Just select the shells you want to offset and then use this:

polyEditUV -u -1;

I have that set as a button, so I just hit it whenever I need it.

achillesian

oh wait, the offset is only needed if i'm going to bake it in maya/max?