Maya 2009: Snapping UV elements to vert

killingpeople

I'd like to know how I can neatly stack mirrored or similar UV islands using Maya 2009.

How do you Maya guys achieve this so you don't have to snap 1 vert at a time to another? Snapping a element will collapse all verts of the element to the single vert you're attempting to snap to.

I've been using the align vert tools to smash a cluster of verts into one, but it's slowing my work.

Any tips would be helpful, Thanks

MoP

Turn on "Retain Component Spacing" in the move tool options. This will stop the verts from collapsing down to a single point.

Then you can use D (edit pivot hotkey) or Insert (edit pivot toggle) to edit the pivot, hold V to snap it to an obvious UV (eg. the top left corner of your UV shell), then leave pivot editing move, and hold V again to snap the newly-placed pivot along with all your selected UVs over the original UV shell.

kodde

Remember that there's one set of Move Tool options for the Viewport and another set of options for the UV Editor. In other words, make sure you have the UV Editor active when looking for this option within the Move Tool options.

Firebert

to add to kodde and MoP, once you have reset your pivot, you can only use that pivot per use, per transform tool.
so lets say you snap your move pivot to the top left UV, then switch to your Scale tool, the Scale tool will reset to the center of your selection instead of staying at the same pivot location as your Move tool. If you switch back to your Move tool out of the Scale tool, your pivot is not retained, but reset back to center again. Same for all transform tools in the uv editor. Sucks ass. I've yet to figure out a good work around on this, and I believe malcolm asked about this issue last year.

MoP, have you seen any good way around this? It can be annoying, but not too cumbersome (once you get used to it (unfortunately)). I'm sure there's a script out there to avoid this issue... one of 5 billion scripts available :P

JackyBoy

Another bug I have noticed aswell with this is that if you turn on "retain component spacing" for UVs, when you move the shell again the options swap back to it being off, so you have to go back to the options and turn it on again. Don't know if that is just me though...
Just keep an eye out

MoP

JackyBoy: That must just be you - I've had Retain Component Spacing on for over a year now and I've only ever set the option once

Firebert: Yeah, you could probably script it quite easily to store the UV pivot across edits. Maybe I'll give it a spin this weekend.

malcolm

Retain component spacing turns off for me too in maya 2009, quite fucking annoying having to turn it back on for uv's each time.

MoP

That'd be annoying if it's a Maya 2009 bug. I haven't used that yet, still on Maya 2008 Extension 2.

killingpeople

Thanks MoP, I've lost track of how many blow jobs I owe you.

JackyBoy

Yeah I am using maya 2009. Although I hope I don't owe you a blow job for pointing out it's a version specific bug...