blog_frotools25

froTools 2.5 : new UV tools | January 02nd, 2012 - 14h42 |
| Cat : Maya, Tutorial |

I’m back again, this time with an update for my maya toolset. My main focus was to update the UI (for getting something more smaller and esay to read) and to add useful UV tools.


What is new ?


//2.5
-Added “Copy” option for the mirror object buttons
-Added UV scale, rotate, and pack to corner option
-Added Random UV tile
-Fixed hotkey setup (now can edit the hotkey)
-Added “Match UV” for matching selected uv vertices to another.
-Added snapshot with color option
-Added shelf button creation

//2.4
-Automatic delete history for ExtVtx (make maya faster)
-Fixed HideUI button not working if the display menu was not loaded
-Added new UV functions for moving a whole UV range
-New UI with tabs -> smaller window


New tools

Copy :
This flag is to enable the copy of your selected mesh by using the “mirror” buttons as a copy, not as an instance.

nGons :
This button will search every nGons on your mesh will select them. You can then hit the toQuad button to convert them into quads/triangles.

delHist ExtVtx :
Enabled by default, this flag set if yes or not the history of the current object will be deleted when you use the “ExtVtx” (Extrude vertex into quad).
This option enabled will increase a lot the speed of maya for performance successive ExtVtx. I recommend to keep it enabled. The undo command is not affected by this option, you can still do some undo if you want.


UV button :
Will set your current select mode into the UV component mode.

Snapshot/1024/Color :
The snapshot button will ask you were to save a tga file which will be based on the current selected models. The field at right set the size of the texture and the button color is to set the wireframe color of the snapshot. You can click on this button to change the color.

Move/Center/Up/Down/Left/Right :
These buttons are used to move the current selected UV island (or all the island if nothing is selected). You can define the length of the step with the field at left of the center button. The center button will move all your island into the Uv range 0/1.

Corner/Upleft/Upright/Downleft/Downright :
These buttons are used to move the current selected UV island (or all the island if nothing is selected). Theses buttons divide by half the current Uv island en move to a corner. This functions are used to easily make texture atlas.

Match :
The match button will try to find the nearest points of your current selection and move them on it. The field at right is used to define the maximum search range. The “+” and “-” button are used to change this value (but you can define it manually).

Random
The Random buttons are used to move randomly all the uv set of the selected objects.
You can chose to move them on u or V or on both. The field at right is used to define an uv range step. At 0, the is no snap at all and the random movement will be totally unsnapped.

UV Scale
These buttons are used to quickly scale the current selected UV island (or all the island if nothing is selected).
You can use the predefined button or apply a custom scale. Uncheck “same ratio” for enabling the second parameter if you want to specify a different value (like U:1.0 V:2.0).

UV Rotate
These buttons are used to quickly rotate the current selected UV island (or all the island if nothing is selected).
You can use the predefined button or apply a custom rotation.


Download, Install and launch


How to launch ?
Call the command “froTools2″ in the mel command line for the first time.
You can use the “Make Shelf Button” (under the “setup” tab) to make a shelf button in your current shelf.

When you are ready, don’t forget to setup the hotkeys in the setup tab.

WARING !
The “hotkeys setup” will change 2 maya keyboard shorcut.
1 – CTRL + d = Advanced duplicate (you will be still able to duplicate like before)
2 – SHIFT + d (or D) = Unused by default, will call the “snap and merge vertex”.

Since version 2.3, the hotkeys have changed, make sure to hit again the “hotkeys setup” button.

Download :
froTools 2.5 : froTools 2.5
lcRetopo : Leocov’s lcRetopo script


Credits


This script is based on a lot of scripts, I would like to thanks the following authors which have made most of these tools :

-Christer Bjørklund – www.christerb.com – Connect Tool
-Christer Bjørklund – www.christerb.com – Extrude Vertex tool
-landis – www.LandisFields.com – Make polygon tool
-Volker Heisterberg (volk@renderwahnsinn.de) – Target weld vertex tool
-Naughty (naughty_genepool@hotmail.com) – Target weld vertex tool
-Brian Keffer – Creative crash Profile – Vertex align tool
-Bean – Creative crash Profile – xsiDuplicate tool
-Andrew Osiow – http://andrewsw3dbrain.com – HideUI based on xTools
-Leocov – http://blog.leocov.com/ – Retopo snap tools
-unsmoothed – Creative crash Profile – OBJ Exporter
-pg.preeth – Creative crash Profile – Match UV
-John Germann – Creative crash Profile – Random UV

Last post update : January 02nd, 2012 - 20h39

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