headus 3D tools

[Asimov]

About two years ago I was really interested in using uvlayout. I have since gone back to unwrapping in 3ds max and 3d coat.

The biggest problem with uv layout is no integration with 3ds max. If I have to export to obj and load it into another program I might as well use 3D coat.

There hasn't been an updated plugin that works for 3ds max in about 3 years.

I don't use maya, and I never will,as I hate it with a passion,so why is there nothing for 3ds max users?

Is uvlayout being developed anymore, or is it dead. I am sure I am not the only one who wants to use this sofware with 3ds max.

[headus]

Yes, we are still developing UVLayout, but unfortunately only have the resources to support the maya plugin ourselves.

I didn't realize that the available Max plugins weren't working, and wish we could fix that, but in the short-term at least don't have an answer to your problem.

Phil

[Asimov]

I used the latest 3ds max plugin and the uvs kept getting screwed up when uvlayout sent it back to max. I tried a really old plugin which worked, but duplicated the mesh before bringing back into max which is messy, as sometimes you forget about the duplicating if you cancel uvlayout.

It seems the latest plugin written for max is for max 2013 and now I have 3ds max 2015, and 2016 is coming out soon as well.

I would quite happily buy uvlayout if I could get integration with max properly, but until then I will stick with 3d coat, which isn't as good at unwrapping by a long way.

Is there any documentation on writing a plugin, because I can't seem to find any. I can do c++ so if there was some good documentation about I may be able to write my own plugin, but I have nothing to go on at the moment.

[headus]

I can't tell you how to write a Max plugin in general, but the docs for writing a UVLayout plugin are here ...

http://www.headus.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=159

All communication is done with plain text files, so is fairly straightforward.

The trickiest bit usually is when you bring the UVLayout edited OBJ back into your application. The simplest approach is to simply load the OBJ, but a better approach (if you app supports it) is to load the OBJ and then transfer the UVs back over to the original object. This preserves any other properties/linkages etc that your object had before you sent it over to UVLayout.

Phil