Right Hemisphere's Deep UV

[biotron]

I use it all the time and I wouldn't work without it. Whether you use it with Max, Maya, or Lightwave, it's a must have in my opinion.

I use it for game development but there's no reason it would be any less valuable for hi-res work. It makes the UV process incredibly simple and fast by use of a combination of powerful features such as the relax tool. Don't confuse this with the relax tool that Maya provides because it does a much better job. When you apply the relax feature to the UVs it spreads them out perfectly so that there will be absolutely no texture stretching!

Another priceless feature is the preserve bitmap function. If you have already applied a bitmap to your model and then decide that you want to rearrange the UVs for some reason, you can do that without repainting the texture by using preserve bitmap. It will rearrange the bitmap to fit with the new UV layout. This feature was a little buggy, but has been fixed with the latest patch.

You can download a fully functional demo version from the Right Hemisphere site.

[playmesumch00ns]

Personally I've found the interface to be clunky and annoying, perhaps I need to spend some more time getting to know it

[biotron]

I use keyboard shortcuts for the mostpart, so the interface doesn't bother me so much. The mapping gizmo interaction is a little funky, though.

There are just a few functions that they have that no one else does, in which I don't want to live without since they save me considerable amounts of time.

[Epitope]

Thanks for the input... I'm asking because I tried RH's Deep Paint 3D before and found it to be absolutely awful... (painting on 2D texture maps in good old Photoshop gave much better results). So I was wondering if Deep UV was any better.

I want to texture a human model that I've been working on. So far I've used a simple, free "unwrap" plugin for the head, which is roughly cylindrical, and painted the textures in Photoshop. I don't know how good that approach will be on the body though, especially with arms spread out, so I was wondering if Deep UV would be any more efficient here.

[biotron]

DeepUV is strictly a UV mapping tool. You can't paint with it.

Download the demo and then try this -

Take your head model and export it to DeepUV. You said you had already applied UVs to it. I bet there's a bit of stretching or pinching around the top and bottom of the head. If you have a checkerboard bitmap applied to it you'll be able to see this right away. Apply the Relax modifier to it. All your stretching problems should be gone.

Now export the model back to whatever 3D app you're using and then render out the wireframe UV layout to a bitmap - I'm not sure how this is done in Lightwave but Maya and Max have easy ways of doing this. Open the bitmap in photoshop in paint away.

[Epitope]

Originally posted by biotron
DeepUV is strictly a UV mapping tool. You can't paint with it.

Download the demo and then try this -

Take your head model and export it to DeepUV. You said you had already applied UVs to it. I bet there's a bit of stretching or pinching around the top and bottom of the head. If you have a checkerboard bitmap applied to it you'll be able to see this right away. Apply the Relax modifier to it. All your stretching problems should be gone.

Now export the model back to whatever 3D app you're using and then render out the wireframe UV layout to a bitmap - I'm not sure how this is done in Lightwave but Maya and Max have easy ways of doing this. Open the bitmap in photoshop in paint away.

Actually, I have not made any UV maps. What I did do was use simple projections... i.e. a Cylindrical projection for the head (with Planar projections for the eye and mouth areas). It's not perfect but seems to work OK... but when it comes to the body, I don't think a simple Cylindrical projection will do justice, which is why I'm looking for an easy way to make UV maps.

So I downloaded Deep UV and tried the two online tutorials, neither of which I had full success with. Instead, Deep UV crashed often... I hope these troubles are just because I haven't put enough effort into it and not because Deep UV isn't useful.

I loaded the my LightWave .LWO object (of a human head and part of the body) in Deep UV, and it displays the wireframe (mostly 4-point polygons) correctly. So I guess I just select areas with the Lasso tool in Perspective view, then cut out the selected polygons in Material view? Is it better to use triangulated (3-point) polys or leave them as 4-point? Thanks

[biotron]

The crashing is probably due to the Open GL settings and your video card. Try running in software and see if you crash as much.

Quads or tri's shouldn't matter.

Yeah, just lasso select areas in the 3d view and then apply whatever type of mapping you like. You then tweak the UVs in the material view.

The program becomes really powerful when you start to figure out the combinations of task that work best for a fast UV layout.
For instance, I might UV an arm like this -

Lasso select arm.
Apply interactive cylindrical mapping.
Cut and join UVs where necessary to get the seam just where I want it.
Apply relax.
Position arm UVs where I want them.

When I get some more time I'll try to put together a tutorial of how I like to use the program.

[Epitope]

It doesn't usually crash (only for Tutorial #2, if I performed a certain sequence of actions). I just got a new video card - nVidia GeForce4 Ti4400, which I think should be good enough, but if it continues to crash I'll switch the Deep UV settings to Software.

I would definitely look forward to seeing such a tutorial. In the meantime, I'll play around with it to see if I can make sense out of it. Thanks again~

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