Great Maya UV's unwrap new script

bugo · Dec 2009

Not sure if this was posted, but I'm sure lots of people here would like to check this out:

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/stevenr/unwrap_uvs_tool_an_interactive_tool_for_automatically_unwrapping_uvs

larolaro · Dec 2009

Nice! I've mostly been using unfold3d but this seems really useful. Thanks for sharing!

MoP · Dec 2009

Cool stuff, I'll give this a shot when I get back home next year. Looks useful!

BeatKitano · Dec 2009

Tried it with some base mesh, this still gives wayyy worse results than a quick shot at uv layout

Gilgamesh · Dec 2009

I had the same experience as Beat. But I started playing with some settings and where to put some seams and it's a much better result but I still not sure if it's actually faster for me.

bugo · Dec 2009

Yeah, we have to think this is a BETA. I hope he launches it very soon so we can play more.

Gallows · Dec 2009

You just saved me a few hours. Thanks man

malcolm · Dec 2009

So does this script work for roads that have uneven poly distribution because if that's the case it would be really useful. If the polies have to be pefectly square for it to work then I already have this functionality in maya by default.

bugo · Dec 2009

Gallows wrote: »

You just saved me a few hours. Thanks man

You welcome

.Murder · Dec 2009

looks good to me, cant wait to test it when i get back to uni as i left my pc there over xmas

Whargoul · Dec 2009

The script doesn't do anything except wrap up a bunch of Maya's tools! So you can do all of this already, if you know the commands to call in which order. I will try it out though - there seems top be some nice stuff in there! I'm not a huge fan of the workflow of it though.

SUNCHIRP · Dec 2009

malcolm wrote: »

So does this script work for roads that have uneven poly distribution because if that's the case it would be really useful. If the polies have to be pefectly square for it to work then I already have this functionality in maya by default.

Maya's Move and Sew is your friend, forget this.... ( Doesn't matter about uniformity ( is that a word ? )

renderhjs · Dec 2009

( Doesn't matter about uniformity ( is that a word ? )

normalize?

Looks like a arrangement of existing commands in maya. The idea of a on screen guidance is nice but also a time consuming process for the artist using it I usually rather prefer context sensitive executions to make decisions rather than a wizard process.

I noticed a few Maya collections of UV related scripts, a wrap or mash up of several of those into 1 usable interface would be nice.

Btw. any update on Diamant UV? that one looked really promising but it never escaped the beta status.

Lamont · Dec 2009

I gave it a whirl last night, it's ok for some things, but you can toss a mesh in there and it will freak out. Till then I am just UV mapping in Maya/LW.

malcolm · Dec 2009

What I really need is to unwrap a road with uneven poly distribution but layout the uv's without stretching and to be aligned with no diagonals. Picture below. I wrote a simple script to get most of the way there and our tech artist wrote a fancy pants script to average the diagonal edges so there is no stretching but it none of this is interactive or let's you specify a texel density during the process.

fade1 · Dec 2009

same for me. tried this yesterday and it was not really working and had a bunch of flaws. we'll have to wait for something better.

SUNCHIRP · Dec 2009

Ok, it's not a perfect solution, but give this a whirl : -

Do you have the bonus game tools installed ?

If so, select your mesh and choose from the Bonus Game Tools Menu, Automatic Wrap Map and Apply it with the following options : -

Which should result in this : -

Now, this result is pretty much similar to grabbing your original mesh, unitising the UVs and then using Maya's MOVE and SEW options. What you gain is UV space within the 0 to 1 range for each polygon, this is the technique I would use normally, but I would also always strive for even poly distribution anyway along a track based racing game, apart from the corners, where I would 'up' the distribution there ( nothing worse than faceted edges on corners ).

Anyway, back to UVs : -

After you have applied the Automatic Wrap Map from the bonus games tools and you get the result shown in screengrab 2, go to Edit UVs > UNFOLD, open the options dialog and apply with the following options : -

This should be your final result : -

Which is UV Mapping that takes into account your track polygons shapes and sizes, which may or may not be what you want, but is correct in terms of mapping, in effect, I think you want this, but without the diagonal lines, but in doing so, you effectively end up 'stretching' your texture anyway to fit into a nice 'squarer' shape that is pleasing to the eye, with your tech. artists averaging script, I reckon you could combine something here that will give you the result you ideally want.

Regards.

EDIT : -

Just to add to this,

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

You can download this to help aid with your Texel Density problems, simply follow the first part of the steps I have shown, then run the KAM script, select the edit UV tab, and select quick scale UV, this will scale your UVs to the correct texel density as set in Pixel Ratio [pixels / metre ] by yourself : -

BEFORE : -

AFTER : -

UVs Scaled in correlation with 'set' Pixel Ratio.

I'm sure your tech. artist could streamline all this into 1 script does all affair. Anyway, hope this helps somewhat.

Regards.

malcolm · Dec 2009

Hi SUNCHIRP, yeah that is the exact workflow we have been using for the last 9 months. Like I said I have a simple script which unitizes, moves and sews then unfold vertical constraint and am left with what you have in your final screenshot. The tricky part is getting rid of all the diagonal edges in the unwrap so our tech artist wrote us a script which straightens these to their average center rather than using maya's align uv's which would cause stretching. Right now mapping a road is a 3 step process and then you have to set your texel density it would be great to have all this stuff update in real time as you extruded the road that's what we had on nfs in max pretty amazing really. I'll look at kam mapper thanks.

malcolm · Dec 2009

I just tried kam mapper. Using the quick scale uv's always results in my uv's being scaled down super tiny in stuck in the bottom left corner. Tried a bunch of random settings always the same result. I think the problem is this tool's in meters and maya is not in meters, I can't figure it out I want a 512 texture to tile once across 4 units I don't care about meters in maya and I'm not really sure what part of the interface to input this there are 3 categories all driven by each other. Totally not intuitive I give up.

SUNCHIRP · Dec 2009

Hi, Malcolm

Regardless of how you get there, align UVs or averaging the centres for the diagonals, your still warping / stretching the UV layout for the texture placement.

Is this for low res game models, i.e. DS tracks, etc ? I just have not heard of people manually extruding polys to create tracks for a very long time, except for low res game specs ? Why aren't you using Nurbs curves to layout a design ? How do you cope with changes, etc on a poly model, at least with nurbs, you always have that cage to go back to and rectify any problems there. It also makes things like corners, height increases / decreases a breeze, I was just curious really.

This is very close to the process I used to use when I worked on different racing games : -

http://neilrennison.co.uk/tutorials/tir_circuit_1.html

I'm afraid having this update and create UVs / Correct Pixel Ratio in realtime in the viewport is going to have to be a job for your tech. artist.

Yeah, the Kam Mapper may be having a problem with your scale, which I would assume is set at centimetres, not metres. If your tech. artist streamlines this script and incorporates it into a 1 off solution for you, it's a simple calculation, 1 metre = 100 centimetres, I'm assuming he could, theoretically, in script, scale your mesh by a factor of 100, freeze transforms ( very important as Kam Mapper won't work otherwise ), apply the Quick UV Scale, then scale the model right back down to 0.01 of it's scale - freeze transforms again. This should give you the correct scaling for your model, if your tech. artist looks deep into the MEL Script code, I'm sure he can figure out easily enough how to convert it to centimetres for you.

I've just physically tried this, and it seems to work ok. It's a pain, but like I said, I'm sure your tech. artist can streamline this for you, after all, it's his job !

malcolm · Dec 2009

Hi SUNCHIRP, yep we use nurbs, at the end of the day when the whitebox is signed off we convert it to polies and have to texture it manually. Straightening the horizontal edges is a must if you want your road texture to follow your spline. If you use unfold and leave it all slanty your texturing will look weird compared to the curvature of your road spline the white dotted lines will have slants in them that don't follow the road. Seems like our workflow won't benefit from the script listed in this thread which is what I needed to know. Thanks everyone.

Great Maya UV's unwrap new script

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