Uvmapping in Maya question

[Flakk]

Since "move and sew" doesn't scale the shells so that they fit perfectly (only the edge/vertices that will be connected are scaled to fit) with each other what do you do when you absolutely must map two faces separately, and THEN sew them together? Am I forced to scale the pieces manually (and thus losing the ...perfection)?
Are there perhaps some plugins for this?

[benclark]

I'm not aware of any plugins to do this. I'm puzzled by why you wouldn't want to scale the faces. Why would you ever want to 2 connecting faces having different UV scales?

The way I UV map is to avoid this happening by mapping every projection to the same width and height. That way all your unwraps are always the same scale so faces always fit together. Once you have everything projected then assign more texture space to the shells that need it

[Flakk]

That's what I DON'T want.. that was my problem, how do I get them all in the same scale?
But you seem to have a sollution anyway . How do you project them to the same scale? I see no such options :/.

edit: oooooooh in the history! Thanks for making me look around :]. Sweet. That's helpful. To say the least.

[benclark]

yeah sorry I should have mentioned its in the channel box. I just make a habit of projecting everything to a scale of 5, saves lot of time scaling everything

[Flakk]

So the follow up question is... Is there a way to set the projection width and height once, so I don't have to do it for each little piece I map?

[Sentientv2]

I usually scale the shells right before I move and sew... lately though I've just been using this incredible tool,

Pelting Tools - Texturing Mel Scripts for Maya

There's a link there to his site where you can find tutorial videos. I know this is something that's pretty standard in Max, but we who occupy the Maya territories don't have the sweet life.

Just make sure you're keeping things in quads as this plugin tends to get confused tracing loops if a 5 edge comes off of at a vertex intersection.

As for your last question, I'm not sure about that. I always use the default settings and scale things on the fly. It never seemed to me to take took terribly long.

[benclark]

Originally Posted by Flakk

So the follow up question is... Is there a way to set the projection width and height once, so I don't have to do it for each little piece I map?

I havent found away to do this yet, it seems like a really obvious option for maya to include but it isnt there

[kaf]

Heya,

What I do is this..

1. Use the Move and Sew as you want so that it connets the edges together.
2. Select the UVs that haven't scaled properly...
3. Goto Unfold option, and choose PIN UNSELECTED.
4. ???
5. PROFIT!

Ideally this will only run the unfold on the selected UVs, which I think is what you're looking for.

I know this is a late reply, but I hope it still helps.

[Sentientv2]

I think what he wants is that as he is mapping different pieces, they all have a certain scale with respect to each other. So it's more the first step that generates a UV shell rather than what to do with UV's once they're there. I could be wrong. I do enjoy me some Unfold though.