What's new in UVLayout 2.10.00
Oct 25, 2016
- New tools added in this version:
- OBJ Import: You can now use the Import button to add another mesh into the current scene. This will allow you to copy or share UVs between the meshes, and also do things like pack shells across two or more meshes to share a single UV map. A demo video can be found here
- Save Marked: Used to save out just part of the loaded mesh or save out only one of the loaded files when Import has been used
- Fit To Grid: Resizes shells so their bounding boxes are aligned perfectly with the current snapping grid. Used for lightmaps. A demo video can be found here
- Changes to existing tools:
- Display: Added option to hide backfacing polys from the 3D views. For example, if you are editing a scene that consists of geometry inside a closed room, ticking this option will allow you to see the internal geometry easily (i.e. the front walls will be hidden).
- Pack: Added option for 0 degree rotation testing, which actually does no rotation, but still randomly shuffles the order that shells are packed. Normally shells are packed from largest to smallest, but sometimes randomly selecting shells using this 0 degree rotation mode can find better packing solutions.
- Pack: The Map Rez can now be set as low as 32x32, used for lightmaps.
- Pack: Moving and scaling boxes will now work with the mouse pointer inside the box, not just on the corner handles.
- Bugs fixed:
- Drag Mode : Edge selecting along a mixture of very long and very short edges didn't behave in a logical manner. Now fixed.
New in UVLayout 2.09.04 (Aug 15, 2016)
- New tools added in this version:
- Box and Lock Overlapping : If you have overlapping shells that you want to keep together during packing, then click this button in the Pack panel and they will all be boxed and locked. Professional version only.
- Changes to existing tools:
- Local Scaling : Added buttons to local scale polys based on distance to camera, facing angle to camera, and from grayscale values in an image file. Professional version only.
- Maya Plugin : Added partial support for UV Sets; UVLayout still only edits one set at a time, but from the plugin side you can now select which UV set to send to UVLayout.
- File dialogs : Added GUI preference to set number of rows shown in lists.
- Pack : If "Don't Resize Shells" is ticked, then the pack tool now does a quick size check on all shells. If any are too large, then the packing aborts and the oversize shells are selected. These shells could then be moved out of the way and locked before trying the pack again.
- F Hotkey : Holding F over a shell now locks onto that shell, so if during optimizing it happens to move from underneath the cursor, that shell will still be flattened until the F key is released.
- C Hotkey : Double tap C to select an edge loop based entirely on topology, not shape. You'd use this when wanting to select edge loops on distorted geometry; it selects across all 4-way junctions, and will stop as soon as it hits a Y fork or 5+-way junctions.
- D Hotkey : By default, all shells are stacked in the UV view so that smaller ones appear over the top of larger ones where they overlap. If you want to push any smaller shells under the larger ones, you can now use the D hotkey to toggle them into a lower stacking layer.
- OpenGL Preference : When UVLayout it first run, an automatic calibration is now run to determine the best OpenGL setting.
- Bugs fixed:
- Pack : If "Don't Resize Shells" was ticked, and any shells were too large to fit in a tile, then the pack tool would take a long time to work this out before returning an error
New in UVLayout 2.09.03 (May 26, 2016)
- New tools added in this version:
- Hotkey : Backquote, above Tab, toggles tile selection mode. When turned on, dragging LMB to box select shells will snap to the UV tiles grid. Also single clicking in a tile will select all shells in that tile.
- Changes to existing tools:
- Pack : Added option to pack selected shells only.
- Ctrl I/K Hotkey : If polygon adjacent to picked edge is G key marked, then only edges adjacent to other marked polys are tagged.
- Segment : Added a button to the Threshold setting, which allows you to manually select one or more polys with the G key first, then adjacent polys facing the same way are filled in with a click of that button.
- OBJ Import : By default, polygons with collapsed UVs were detached back into Ed space. Now the default is to leave them in UV space but add new UVs to fix the problem. The old method can be turned back on with the "Auto Split Odd Polys" preference.
- Bugs fixed:
- Maya Plugin : Broken for grouped objects.
- Overlap : Now finds all overlaps, including very small sub-pixel ones and self-intersecting polys.
- Pack : Potential crash if packing with some shells locked and rotations turned on.
- Flip Shells : Not undo-able with Ctrl-Z. Also affected shells flipped by the Copy UVs tool (i.e. undoing that action didn't restore flip status of stacked mirror shells).
- EPS Export : Scale of output unit square was fixed at 100 units. Its now variable according to the scale of the object.
- OBJ Export : UVs not exported correctly right after packing or resizing boxes. Needed some other action (i.e. a move) to update them. Affected the plugin Send as well.
- OBJ Import : Failed when the mesh contained polys with hundreds of vertexes.
- Big World Import Preference : If loading objects a long way from the origin, its recommended to turn on the Big World Import preference. On certain objects though this was causing corrupted UVL save files.
New in UVLayout 2.09.02 (Dec 19, 2015)
- Changes to existing tools:
- Groups: Can now edit the group lists and their memberships. For example, you can now create a new material name and add polygons or shells to it.
- Display: Added option to hide the green UV seams when viewing the mesh in the textured 3D views.
New in UVLayout 2.09.01 (Nov 17, 2015)
- New tools added in this version:
- Shift-J Hotkey : During development, we stress tested the flattening algorithm by randomizing the UVs on a shell first (J is for junk). So this "new" tool isn't at all useful for getting any real work done, but it can be interesting to see what happens regardless. Type Shift-J then Space-F to flatten.
- Changes to existing tools:
- Display : Added the option to use normals imported from the OBJ file when shading meshes in the T hotkey textured views.
- Bugs fixed:
- Live Editing : Was slowed when the Pack tool "Show Tile Coverage" option was turned on.
- Show Tile Coverage : If turned on, sometimes caused a fatal error if the F hotkey was used on a shell. This bug wasn't in earlier versions, just in the 2.09.00 release.
- Edge Picking : Sometimes didn't work if an edge was overlapped by other polygons in a shell.
New in UVLayout 2.09.00 (Sep 23, 2015)
- New tools added in this version:
- Live Editing: When turned on, each shell's flattening is automatically optimized as cuts and welds are made. >Demo video<
- Shell Sorting: By flattened UV area, by area in 3D or by number of polygons.
- Display Udims: Or tile U,V numbers in the UV view, plus you can type in a number and the view will jump to that tile.
- Save Hotkey: Typing '>' in the graphics window will now save the current mesh out to a UVL file. This can be used as an emergency recovery if the normal GUI save buttons are unavailable (e.g. if the GUI windows lockup or disappear).
- Changes to existing tools:
- S Hotkey: Now have the choice to place the mirrored shell either flipped and under the first shell, adjacent to the first shell, on the opposite side of the current tile, or on the opposite side of the next tile. Also the S hotkey will switch to a rectangle select, if nothing is under the mouse pointer, to perform the copy on multiple shells. >Demo Video<
- Copy UVs: Added the option to specify the U or V offset when placing copied shells. Also added the option to find edges on all topologically matched geometry, not just of the same or similar size. >Demo Video<
- Move/Scale/Rotate: Added buttons to move selected shells by whole tiles in N, E, S, W or diagonal directions. Also moved the shell align to axes option out of the Pack tool and into here, and can align/rotate shells so they are arranged vertically within the 3D space.
- Rescale: Added option to rescale selected shells as a group, keeping their relative size and positioning.
- Display Trace: If you click the Dismiss button when selecting a trace image, the standard checker patterns will be displayed in the UV view background instead.
- Segment: Now abortable by holding Space
- Max Shells preference: When an OBJ file is loaded, the overall bounding box of the UVs is checked, and if its larger than this value, an error is displayed. If the UVs of your mesh really do span over more than 100 tiles, then you can increase that limit.
- Maya Plugin: Added support for Maya LT, the option to turn on extra logging for debugging, plus options for forcing Subdiv meshes and the UV size within UVLayout.
- Bugs fixed:
- Pack Rotation: Fixed crashes caused by the new threaded rotation testing code.
- Overlap: Rare crash in the overlap testing code found and fixed.
- Shift-S Hotkey: Edge straightening tool didn't immediately update the displayed UVs.
New in UVLayout 2.08.02 (Mar 24, 2014)
- Changes to existing tools:
- R Hotkey : Will now do a general grid layout if selected shell is all quads and the topology allows.
- Pack : Added option to pack using the current Trace image as a mask. White areas will be filled while black areas are left empty.
- There's an example of it in action here.
- Load options : More feedback now given on what the "Clean" option actually did when loading the current mesh.
- DXF Export : Added a Load preference to select between millimeters and inches in the exported DXF file.
- Render : Added options to show valley folds as dashed line, and overlay a grid of the specified spacing.
- Bugs fixed:
- Load options : Using "Clean" on some meshes would cause a fatal error. Also polygon, material or smoothing group references were broken if any polys were deleted as part of the cleaning process.
- Set Size : If the UV size was set in the preferences, it didnt apply that correctly when loading OBJs with existing UVs.
- Groups : If the OBJ being loaded had multiple hundreds of groups defined, then this sometimes caused UVLayout to lock up completely.