Maya UV Tools?

G3L

Hey all,

I know there's a textools script/plug-in (forgow which of the two it was) for Max. Was wondering if there was anything similar for Maya?

Basically what I would want is numerical control of my UV's. Say for example I want to offset something 1 unit to the right or left, I can input the number and it'll move it so. Currently you CAN do this but for some reason, if I do it on a shell, it'll collapse or rather line up all the UVs on the number you input.

Or if I want to uniform scale something down by 50%, I can input that and it will do it at that exact percentage. It's a bit tedious to resize my shells manually instead of having a number I can input since I know exactly how much I need it to be.

Any type of UV tools for Maya would be appreciated. Searched the forums but couldn't find anything relevant. Thanks!

m4dcow

sdv_xformUV does pretty much what you are looking for
http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/texturing/c/sdv_xformuv--2

I use KAM Mapper/UV Ninja, but that costs money but does more stuff.

oglu

just tick the icon with the 0.0 and the red circle arrow... and it will work without plugins...

G3L

m4adcow: ooo interesting! i'll try that one out! thanks a lot

oglu: omg...yes that works! the only thing is if u want to move it to a certain position on the uvs, you can't, meaning if i input 2.54 it's going to take my shell 2.54 units to the right, and if i input 1/54 after that it's going to take me another 1.54 units to the right where i would want 1.54 to be the actual uv position in the window.

regardless that still helps tons though, thank you

G3L

sweetness, thesdv xform tool works perfect >< thanks a lot guys!

jonatanl

Should definitely check out UVDeluxe developed by a friend of mine. We use it at our office all the time. I even re-assigned the hotkey (u) for the usual UV editor to UV deluxe;) Love the straighten UV's and pixel density settings. A nice function is that you can render a UV snapshot to a hardcoded location on the hard drive so that you can set up up a action in Photoshop to automatically open the snapshot and paste it into the clipboard. It's for free too;) All credits to Erik:)

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/texturing/c/uvdeluxe

dannedadon

also work with jonatan and erik and i agree about UVDeluxe, it really simplifies a lot of things that are really tedious and unnecessary. Just smooths out the uv worflow. good stuff

Gilgamesh

I use a tonne of custom hot keys and xform and get by just fine really, the only thing I would really like is a pelt tool like max has. I will try out the UVdelux though as I'm always looking for newer tools to work with.

Grimm_Wrecking

Not to jack the thread or anything, but it relates:
I came across a script a year or so ago on cg hub that let you shift uv shells +1 -1 u/v via marking menu (shift+rmb/ctrl+rmb) but when my last computer took a dump it went the way of the dodo.

Wondering if anyone has that script or one similar. I've tried all the usual places, but that doesn't mean I haven't overlooked it.

Lamont

I use XFormUV and UV Auto Ratio Pro.

malcolm

Grimm_Wrecking sdvxform has that shift uv's by one thing you are looking for, a couple other must have tools in the interface as well.

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/c/sdv_xformuv--2

G3L

ill give UV deluxe a shot as well, so far I'm loving XformUV 2.7 for Maya Thanks again everyone for the input!

Gazu

Just trying to install UVDeluxe for Maya 2013, but it dont work.


It´s allright, or?

passerby

got it stored in the proper location, since that is the right command to fire it up, and i can confirm it works on 2013

tristamus

jonatanl wrote: »

Should definitely check out UVDeluxe developed by a friend of mine. We use it at our office all the time. I even re-assigned the hotkey (u) for the usual UV editor to UV deluxe;) Love the straighten UV's and pixel density settings. A nice function is that you can render a UV snapshot to a hardcoded location on the hard drive so that you can set up up a action in Photoshop to automatically open the snapshot and paste it into the clipboard. It's for free too;) All credits to Erik:)

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/texturing/c/uvdeluxe

+3

Definitely the most useful UV script I've ever seen or had for Maya. It has everything mentioned here and more. Will save you hours. And yes, it definitely works for Maya 2013.

agentfx

I've gone trhough tools for better UVing in maya but at the end of the day there are things that will help but maya sucks at UV'ing. I've had to UV a crap load of models and I've started just exporting to 3D Coat UVing and importing back in, even for small models. But if you must stick with just maya (as I did for years)
Roadkill UV is a nice start to auto unwrap. I bought UVNinja on creative crash, its ok, probably not with the $35 but there are some nice features similar to UVDelux and a few more robust ones, that are nice... but really nothing makes maya as good as other software The interactivity and ease of use of 3d Coat destroys maya. I've seen Max artist also have tools that make maya look like its 100 years old.
Siggraph Modo was pushing how amazing it is at UV'ing, but I've not used it. They had a big crowd for their demo tho.
The demo of 3D Coat is a month free full featured. If you need I can make you a quick how to video for UV'ing in it.

bk3d

agentfx wrote: »

I've gone trhough tools for better UVing in maya but at the end of the day there are things that will help but maya sucks at UV'ing. I've had to UV a crap load of models and I've started just exporting to 3D Coat UVing and importing back in, even for small models. But if you must stick with just maya (as I did for years)
Roadkill UV is a nice start to auto unwrap. I bought UVNinja on creative crash, its ok, probably not with the $35 but there are some nice features similar to UVDelux and a few more robust ones, that are nice... but really nothing makes maya as good as other software The interactivity and ease of use of 3d Coat destroys maya. I've seen Max artist also have tools that make maya look like its 100 years old.
Siggraph Modo was pushing how amazing it is at UV'ing, but I've not used it. They had a big crowd for their demo tho.
The demo of 3D Coat is a month free full featured. If you need I can make you a quick how to video for UV'ing in it.

Not Worth $35? Sorry to hear that.. I have save a ton of time with the Ninja UV. What features would you like to see to make Ninja_UV worth $35.00 . I'm always updating the tool so i do appreciate suggestions. Maybe one day you will be "Well worth $35.00"

agentfx

Hey Brian, sorry for that comment. Its obvious there's a lot of work in there, 10k lines of code is no joke. It was worth it for me. I'd say the reason for that comment is a lot UVNinja is accessing Maya commands through MEL. My issue with that is a lot of maya's UV commands are a bit unreliable. smoothUV sometimes explode or stops working all together for example (I know a sometimes fix is flipping UV's) Check Pixel aspect ratio is another function I think maya's command is flawed and give unreliable results. In fairness that's not easy thing to calculate.

I've used UVNinja for a while now, and it is part of my workflow for editing UV's.

my only complaint about your tool is the straighten UV's works only 1 out of 20 times. If there was an exposed grid value of which its snapping to or if you are run through edgeloops convert selection to UV's, straighten... I just don't know why every now and then it works perfectly. b/c most of the time its undo, redo by hand.

I will say that UVNinja is the best tool for making maya better at UV'ing that I've found. I stopped using the Ninja Mapping but just testing it now maybe I should go back to that.

Its also not quite fair for me to say what its worth since I don't use it for all the reasons it was made. I bake textures with VRay for example. And 3D Coat for most UV work. 3D Coat interactively auto unfolds islands as you select and un-select seams, displays tension compression, has rainbow checkered colored islands, many different methods for auto packing UV's... its not close. I then go back into maya for some fine tune editing. So I'm missing out on the best part of UVNinja the Ninja Mapping.

Its damn good tho, just maya's workflow can only be helped so much.

I was surprised that you wrote the whole thing in MEL, (I'm surprised that you've not made it a plug-in yet, just to protect yourself. Whats stopping free UVDelux from stealing parts of your code and give it away? They already look like they have some similar functions. Tell you what, I do think UVNinja is the best Maya UV solution so if you make it C++ plug-in I'll help you make icons for it. Its not that I need it as a plug-in but you should go that route, you're obviously smart enough to do it and then some.

bk3d

hey agentfx.. well i have spent alot of time and rewrote the straighten uv.. the older version worked really well on interior uvs only. the updated version works better on all uv's. ill be updating this soon.

The Ninja Mapping automates alot of mapping tasks. creating a planar projection.. then rotating it.. scalingi it .. unfolding it and scaling to a pixel ratio. a process that is tedious.. is set to a button click. makes it easy to re-map when you make changes to object.

The reason i have kept it in mel is for portability. I see alot of posts wanting an updated version of a plugin and they dont get it. As long as its in mel its should be backwards compatible. At my company we are still using 2009 because they have not gotten our plugins to work with newer versions of maya.

Deadly Nightshade

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/texturing/c/nightshade-uv-editor

Completely free, completely integrated with the default editor and comes with features such as:
-Stack UV shells
-Orient UV shells
-Align UV shells
-Spread UV shells
-Set texel density
-Calculate pixel distance

Has an advanced UV manipulator you can operate completely with your mouse, has an integrated UV set editor and yea... it's free and work for all versions of Maya!

agentfx

Cool, look forward to the update.

bk3d

Ok i updated ninja UV on creative crash

Ninja UV 3.7
1. added an option to delete history when running Ninja Mapping. This will speed up uv mapping
2. improved Auto Unfold guessing. It will now select between HV VH and Both
3. adjusted UI of the preview section
4. Added buttons to the UV Editor if you use the [UV editor] button in Ninja_UV. (works in 2011 and up only)
5. Added a straighten UV Selection. This is a much improved way of straightening UV's. It will work with uv shells that have holes.
The angle tolerence will determine which edges will get straigtened.

agentfx

awesome! New update looks good, I'll run it through its paces soon.