Best pelt mapping software

[el_diablo]

Houdini's UV mapping toolset is best IMHO. Note, I mainly do organics and its Pelt mapping combined with uv brushing tools make short work of any of my high poly models.

[shade]

Well, MoDo's unwrapper is quite good and easy to use, altho It doesnt make flawless results. I usually find myself adjusting them quite a bit later. Anyway, just a thought, have you checked the prices on that unfold3d?

[3dtutorial]

Hi,
Whilst trying to find out if Luxology's "Click,Drag,Unwrap" advert had much credibility, I found Unfold3d - http://www.polygonal-design.fr/e_unfold/index.php, and the demo version seems pretty nice, if a little redundant given the 1000 tri limit.

Anyhow, I'm considering getting it if it's going to save me a whole lot of time, but now I find that Wings3d, Blender and Houdini all offer the same feature, which in the case of Wings and Blender, is free. Cue an hour sifting through the forums to try and find out which of these gives the best results, and I'm still barely any the wiser.

People who don't seem to have used Unfold3d claim that Wings and Blender do it just as well for free. The few people who have posted who own a license of Unfold3d swear by it (although I would be inclined to do so aswell if I'd paid that much for a uv unwrapping program).

I'm interested in hearing people's experiences using the various packages, especially people with an Unfold 3d license, and how much difference there is between them (ie how much tweaking the end result requires. On their forum, the Unfold3d guys claim that they use a different algorithm for their unwrapping, which gets better results - is there a notable enough difference to warrant paying for it?


In my view you would be insane to pay what they are asking for this tool. When these guys were the only people in town with this techonology, perhaps. But the market has now changed and as is ever the case those who want technology early pay the price for it, those who are willing to wait get a great deal. (I am old enough to remember when caculators where first introduced and they cost about $300.00 for one with giant red led's that was a large as a book and got hot as a frying pan. A year or 2 later they were the size of a credit card and being given away for free) I will be willing to bet that nearly every major pro app will soon include some form of pelt mapping as it is the tool of the moment that everyone wants.

So, you might want to hang on to your money for a bit longer ;-)

Of course, this is only my opinion and others may not agree.

But I think I'm right ;-)

Kind Regards,

/joe

[LordMcGoat]

Thanks for your responses. I had checked the price of unwrap3d, infact that was the motivation behind the thread - to see if it was anything really different to what is already on offer elsewhere. The "surface optimization" feature looks great, but that is only available in the facinatingly priced studio edition.

Would be good to hear from anyone who owns unwrap3d and has used the other packages, just to see if there is anything actually different about it to warrant the price.

[manuaarts]

Take a look to the new version (v4.0 beta) of unfold3d : IMPRESSIVE !

http://www.polygonal-design.fr/e_unfold/videos/unfold3d-v4-keeper.avi

http://www.polygonal-design.fr/e_unfold/videos/footman.avi

i really think that is now the best tool to make uv's !

[3dtutorial]

Take a look to the new version (v4.0 beta) of unfold3d : IMPRESSIVE !

http://www.polygonal-design.fr/e_unfold/videos/unfold3d-v4-keeper.avi

http://www.polygonal-design.fr/e_unfold/videos/footman.avi

i really think that is now the best tool to make uv's !


Well this may all be true.

However the reason that I would never purchase this tool (and I'm sure many other will not either) is because:

A.) The price is insane

B.) The node locking seems far too restrictive on a item with such an over-the-top price point.


Lastly, the software might seem more attractive (even at the high price) if it used a dongle rather than software node-locking.

But as it is -- forget it.

That's my feeling -- others may disagree, I'm sure.

/j

[manuaarts]

A.) The price is insane

B.) The node locking seems far too restrictive on a item with such an over-the-top price point.


A.) The price is important, but this is a tool designed for production or for a lot of user and work. Because you can automate all the tasks, you can send to unfold3d many objects and they will be unwrapped and saved. If you compare the time spend without unfold3d and the price of the soft, you will earn money quickly (it's my point of view).

B.) There is a licence for studio (up to 15 cpus). I think this kind of problem (licensing, dongle) are not the most important when you have many many objects to unfold in a week ! But i understand that could be annoying.


If you want the best result possible, unfold3d is the right choice.
If you want to do your unwrap as fast as possible, it's the same.

And there is a last festure very interresting : surface adjustement, that allow to get an uniform density on the uv, i mean reduce stretching.

[manuaarts]

As i talk before,
demonstration of surface adjustment function :

http://www.polygonal-design.fr/e_unfold/videos/leloo.avi

i don't know an other application with this kind of tool.

[EricChadwick]

The free LCSM unwrapper from Blender is now available free for 3ds Max, and it works great. Coupled with Max 8's UV Relax tool, it's extremely fast.
http://www.planetquake.com/polycount/cottages/crazybutcher/index.html?/polycount/cottages/crazybutcher/code/_3dsmax.html
And did I mention the price?

[Creed]

And what are the legal ramifications of ripping open-source software and using it in a
commerical app?

[EricChadwick]

Beats me. The author makes no money from it though. AFAIK the implementation is purely a port, simply making the existing algo. run in a different app.

[RockinAkin]

3ds max 8's built-in pelt mapping features are a joy to work with.
Already saved countless hours of manual unwrapping work with it.

[cyartist]

Unfold3d is overpriced for the average user. A studio could buy it at that price. The average user is not buying that software at that price when you can buy a whole 3d application. End of discussion.

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