Unwrella - the new Texture Unwrapping Plug-in for 3DS Max!

[elte]

http://www.unwrella.com/

- Automatic one-click solution - Just apply the Unwrella modifier
- Smart - Reduces texture mapping seams almost completely
- Optimal - Creates maximal number of large chunks
- Efficient - Arrangement of chunks wastes no space on the UV surface
- One-to-one Layout - Minimizes surface stretching
- Excellent for all kinds of models (organic, human, industrial)

Unwrella is an exact unwrapping plug-in for 3D Studio MAX. It is a single click solution which allows you to unfold your 3D models with exact pixel to model surface aspect ratio in the fastest way.

Unwrella has been designed to speed up the Realtime graphics UV mapping production significantly while producing optimally unwrapped textures at the same time.


Has anyone heard of it? I saw the tool is pretty impressive, but from the pictures in the website their UV is although has perfect ratio, it's not well laid out... and its hard if someone wants to hand paint it..

[Tygereye107]

It looks like it does the same old tricks, just with one-click instead of several. Handy, but not that great for games. I've been looking for an unROLLer (which is what I've decided to call it), an unwrapper which can be used to create UVs for environmental trims... something that relaxes but locks your outer edges to be flat along the U or V axis. Anyone seen anything like THAT? That I would pay for.

[Kickflipkid687]

I'm trying to get UV tools from work released to the public or something, but idk... seems like its alot of work for them.

[Draxxuss]

What a terrible name for a product. I'm fond of roadkill myself but I would like to try this one out...

[Kickflipkid687]

I dled it and requested the key, I'm curios to see how well it works.

[Vig]

If you're a 3dsmax user and you're concerned about pixel density Paul Greveson (http://www.ldaustinart.com/paul/index.php?page=3dart) put together a nice little script that normalizes UV pieces (http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=52415&highlight=normalizeUvScale.ms).
http://www.greveson.co.uk/scripts/normalizeUvScale.ms
It works great in 2009 as part of the UVunwrap Editor Window quad menu.

As for the script at hand, it seems like the seams are arbitrary? I'm not so sure simpler is better in this case. I don't have too many problems defining seams, relaxing and pulling parts around. It just takes some getting used to, I'm not sure there's a quality shortcut for this kind of stuff...

The interesting part is the packing, something most apps are horrible at, could be worth a peak just for that, but I'm not sure that alone would be enough sell me.

Good find tho, worth keeping an eye on it!

[walrus]

Can I ask a dumb question: What does that mean, to "normalize UV pieces?"
Thanks!

[Kickflipkid687]

Well I tested it on some organic objects, like a face and arm, and sure the checkers were nice, but the seams were horribly placed and the UVs themself in the editor looked god awful.

[elte]

That's what I questioned myself when looking at their demo...

It's unlike other UV tool like uvlayout where you can manually adjust your seams.

I don't know about max but in maya or modo we can have 2 or more UV sets. Perhaps the UV generated by Unwrella is good for normal map baking, and we can use another UV sets which are manually laid for diffuse and other maps.

CMIIW.

[Polyhertz]

What does that mean, to "normalize UV pieces?"

Make them all roughly the same size so their isn't inconsistency in the pixel density on applied textures.

I don't know about max but in maya or modo we can have 2 or more UV sets.

Yep, max can have multiple sets too.

[Ged]

Well I tested it on some organic objects, like a face and arm, and sure the checkers were nice, but the seams were horribly placed and the UVs themself in the editor looked god awful.

how come they show examples on their webpage saying the seams are invisible? if you could just manually select seams and then do one click and its all done with unwrapping and normalising and packing that would be better than this in my opinion.

[Kickflipkid687]

Probably just to get you to purchase it or try it, then spam you with e-mails.

I didn't see anything about selecting seams, which yes, would be really nice. It just seems to uwnrap however it wants to so that it gets decent squares, but horribly places seams. Like on the arm test I did, it was along the front of the arm, and the hand was unrecognizable in the UV window(Also horribly stretched).

[speedy / 3d-io]

Elite hit the spot, Unwrella is an essential tool for seams-free normal map baking, general texture baking, painting textures in zbrush and/or mudbox. It is not so good for "manual" painting in photoshop as it currently produces arbitrary placed seams.

I think that what you guys expect on top of that is manual seams placement, which we are working on currently for v2. More details about this feature can be found on: http://www.unwrella.com/2008/11/editable-seams-support-in-the-works/

Cheers,
Milan "speedy" Bulat,
Unwrella Team,
3d-io GmbH

[Vig]

Can I ask a dumb question: What does that mean, to "normalize UV pieces?"
Thanks!

It's kind of like a scale equalizer. If you have UV pieces of different sizes it averages their sizes.
Its nothing as powerful as a one button unwrapper or packing tool but pretty handy when you need the scales of a bunch of pieces to match. Helps control pixel density in a quick way.
so lets say your model has huge and small checkers, this script sizes the pieces so all the checkers are equal.

Kickflip, thanks for taking the time to test it out. I guess there's always some give when it comes to creating "one button apps".
I'll probably stick to using pelt, auto unwrap and sew or the tried and true cylinder/planar methods, all seem to be quick and offer more flexibility. I could see where this would be a quick solution for people short on time, the packing feature looks promising, both Maya and Max's auto pack features are kind of poor, but on something so complex and where personal preference weighs in pretty high its hard to make something "smart enough" big kudos for taking a huge leap forward in that regard. But for game art its pretty important to be able to control seam placement.

I don't really see where its seam-free, I guess in the sense that even an auto unwrap set to a high angle would be seam free? Could you maybe expand on that a bit?

And yes 3dsmax handles unlimited UV channels really well.

[Snowfly]

speedy - It would be awesome if Unwrella could also keep the center axis of symmetrical pieces perfectly vertical. And keep edges that are close to parallel/perpendicular to the ground plane in 3D space lined up as closely as possible in UV space.

Unwrella's site mentions parametrization from 3D to 2D space, but I'm not exactly sure what that means to the lay user. Could you possibly compare the end results of Unwrella's unwrapping algorithm with, say, what the LSCM method (used in Roadkill, Blender, Silo, etc.) does under the hood? For starters, LSCM on its own doesn't seem to know how to keep an even texel density, which I can see Unwrella handles very well. But both seem to do a decent job at minimizing stretching.

http://www.pullin-shapes.co.uk/page8.htm
http://www.blender.org/download/sandbox/lscm-basics/

Also I'd implore you to take a look at Roadkill's seam toggling + UV packing on the fly. Very handy solution imo, and much more intuitive than click on an apply button for every iteration.

Is there any way to implement a smart detection of areas where seams would most likely be concealed? Maybe by placing a camera where the model would most often be viewed from, and searching for edges that face the ground, are away from the viewer, or inside crevices and concave areas of the mesh?

[speedy / 3d-io]

Okay, I'll first answer Vig about the seam-free enhancement to the texture baking workflow, which is the strong usage point of Unwrella v1.

Basically, for majority of the baked objects, first and biggest change Unwrella brings is that you won't have to hide the seams, or care where they are placed. That can happen because Unwrella minimizes texture stretch and thus removes one big part of the what causes visible seams.

The other change is that you don't have to spend your time unwrapping, Unwrella does everything for you. ;)

(plus you get goodies like uniform texture detail level all over the model, unwrapping multiple objects at once, and similar..)

Now, if you want to paint in the texture or still want to hide those minimized seams, Unwrella v2 would be the answer, and I'll delve into that in the following message(s).

I hope this clarifies what Unwrella is, from the workflow perspective. :)