headus 3D tools

[TwoSheds]

maybe there's already a way to do this, maybe not.
But when you hit Shift+F and it first unfolds a mesh, it soon collapses and begins refining. It will run for 60 seconds and then stop, but then if you hold down the F key it will continue refining for as long as you hold the key down or until it can't change anything else.

The problem is, I often need far more than that 60 seconds, particularly with hands with fingers, that are very slowly moved back into relative position and shape. I often find myself sitting there holding down the F key for 4 or 5 minutes, waiting for it all to straighten out.

What I'd like to be able to do is set it to do that for, say, 5 minutes, so I can walk away and let it do its thing while I go to the bathroom or raid the refrigerator.

I know that "Optimize" allows you to be able to set a time limit, but that deals with the entire mesh, one shell at a time, and I'd like to be able to do this on a shell-by-shell basis.

Thanks.

[GeoffRiley]

If you use Space-F then it just runs continuously until you press Space again... is that what you're after?

Geoff

[TwoSheds]

[headus]

Yes, thanks again Geoff!

"Optimize ... but that deals with the entire mesh"

Not if you have one or more shells picked with the LMB first. In that case, only the picked shells are optimized. I'd also Open up the Edit Preferences and turn *off* Slow Smooth Optimize ... that will speed everything up by only updating the display a couple of times a second, which means its spending more time doing the actual calculations.

I personally have the F1 key mapped to the optimize "Run For" button, so then I just LMB pick a shell and tap F1 and it'll flatten out quickly. You can map the F keys under the Edit panel Settings.

And finally, you could try the Shift-B hotkey. That slightly enlarges the shell, then goes into the same optimize loop as Shift-F. The enlarging can help to pull kinks out. Even while its doing its flattening you can use Shift-B one or more times if you feel it needs another "kick" to help things out.

Phil

[GeoffRiley]

[TwoSheds]

Wow that's great Phil, and thanks for all that information!

I have to say, UV Layout is way above and beyond all the other UV programs I've tried, including the UV tools in Maya, Modo, 3ds max and Softimage. It's such a joy to use... especially for such a mundane and often tedious and aggravating task. UV Layout makes it fun and more importantly, very fast.

I had a figure yesterday morning I started mapping and I needed to have it done by this morning. I was finished with it before lunch yesterday, only a few hours. And it was your basic human figure, with lots of resolution. I wouldn't have ever gotten it done that quickly with Maya's UV Texture Editor.

[headus]

Thanks for the feedback, and I'm glad to hear you find UV'ing fun now :) I'm still not sure really why UVLayout can be fun sometimes; if I could distill that magic ingredient and turn it into a mobile game, well, I'd at least get all my non-programmer friends off my back who keep telling me "you should make a mobile app!".

Phil

[GeoffRiley]

Ah, but it is fun to use - as utility software goes I would say this is by far and away the most enjoyable program I ever use. ...and as a programmer I use an awful lot of programs.