Jim Charter <jrc### [at] msncom> wrote:
> I am a little reluctant to comment here since I have yet to produce a
> uvmapped result of professional quality but here is the direction I've
> gone in fwiw.

That's alright.  I have yet to produce... much of anything.

> The thing I like to do is to export the unsmoothed cage to Uvmapper (via
.... (no reason to quote the whole thing)

Maybe it's my problem then because I can't figure out how to get UVMapper to
do more than display the points and faces.  I can move faces around, but
then they just sit there, disconnected from the rest of the mesh.  The
weld, etc. commands don't seem to do anything (it's the mac version if that
makes a difference.)  It's probably pretty obvious that the solution is to
uv-map right away when it's not too complex rather than at the end.  I
think that's my whole problem in the first place.  I held off though since
the last thing I did was to break the virtual mirror in Wings3D so I only
had to work on half of the model.  UV mapping before it is actually
mirrored seems pointless.  By that time the model is complex enough that I
couldn't have done it symmetrically without a virtual mirror, but too
complex to feasibly shift vertices around by hand in the small window of UV
Mapper or the painfully slow AutoUV of Wings3D.  Is there a simple solution
to this dillema?  Do regions and materials make it that much easier?  Is
the map discontinuous then?

My other problem with UVMapper is the inefficiency.  The file below shows
the .obj output from UVMapper.  Four vertices (v) and four normals (vn)
went in, four vertices, four normals, and nine uv vectors (vt) came out?!
Notice the duplication.  It doesn't even use the first, fifth, or ninth
uv-vector (the middle indices in the face list).  So in the end, it uses
six of nine vectors where only four are necessary.  This doesn't happen at
all if I do it myself.  This isn't a big problem since the final result is
the same, but for large meshes, that can slow things down a bit.  Not that
I'm in a huge hurry, but I still have things to be doing...  Why would they
do this?

 - Ricky

# file generated by UVMapper
# NumVerts/NumTVerts/NumVNormals/NumFacets   4/9/4/2
# NumGroups/NumMaterials/NumRegions   1/1/0
# x/y/color/ppu   640/320/0/1.00000000

v -0.80512398  0.21356300  0.76134598
v -0.78923601  0.30919600  0.77591699
v -0.77485198  0.29935700  0.81732601
v -0.78485203  0.22935700  0.80732602

vt -0.38052213  1.00000000    <--unused
vt  0.46231049  0.02500000
vt  0.97499996  0.48888922
vt  0.02500000  0.97499996
vt -0.38052213  1.00000000    <--unused
vt  0.46231049  0.02500000    <--unnecessary
vt  0.97499996  0.48888922    <--unnecessary
vt  0.46231043  0.69265592
vt -0.38052213  1.00000000    <--unused

vn  0.83070999  0.46008500  0.31343701
vn  0.84070998  0.47008500  0.32343701
vn  0.89709097 -0.42746699 -0.11180300
vn  0.79720998  0.25963601 -0.54501897

g Figure 1
usemtl cube2_auv
f 1/2/1 2/3/2 3/4/3
f 1/6/1 2/7/2 4/8/4

Post a reply to this message