UVAutoRatio2.0ProDocumentation

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uvAutoRatio Pro

v2.5.4www.uvAutoRatio.com

www.RenderHeads.com

Last Updated 10 December 2012

Copyright © 2007-2012 RenderHeads Limited. All rights reserved.

http://www.uvautoratio.com/

http://www.renderheads.com/













1. Introduction

1.1 What Is This? UVAutoRatio 2.0 Pro is a tool to help Maya artists get their UVs (texture coordinates) to the

right scale. It unifies the '2D texture area' to '3D surface area' ratio across multiplemeshes or mesh regions (UV shells).

This sounds rather complex, but really it's simple:

By scaling an objects UVs, its 2D texture area is scale relative to it's 3D surface

area. So objects with large 3D surface area will get a large texture area, and

objects with a small 3D surface area will get a smaller texture area.

UVAutoRatio does this all automatically for you. It is very fast and can quickly processscenes with a multitude of meshes or very high polygon meshes. It also offers a host of

options for customising the way operation are performed.

1.2 Key Features

● Very fast algorithm! Can quickly process thousands of objects/shells and very high

polygon meshes.

● Simple and flexible workflow. Just a few clicks to wield supreme power.

● Operates on both meshes and UV shells.

● Automatically fixes overlapping UV shells in a non destructive manner.● Maintains usage settings between sessions.

● Supports all major 32 and 64-bit versions of Maya on Windows, Mac and Linux

● Windows installer for painless installation.

● Multi-language support.

● Automatic version update notification system.

● Unit-aware. No matter what distance units you're using it will give the correct results.

● Professional support.

2. Getting Started 2.1 Requirements The following versions of Maya are supported:




Microsoft Windows:

● 32-bit: 6.0, 6.5, 7.0, 8.0, 8.5, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013

● 64-bit: 8.0, 8.5, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2013

Apple Mac OS X:

● 32-bit Intel: 8.5, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012

● 32-bit PPC: 8.5, 2008● 64-bit Intel: 2011 and 2012

Linux:

● 32-bit: 8.0, 8.5, 2008

● 64-bit: 8.0, 8.5, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011

Please let us know about your platform requirements.

2.2 Installation

2.2.1 Windows Installation UVAutoRatio 2.0 Pro is downloaded as an executable installer file.

1. Once the file has downloaded, double-click the installer to launch it.2. The first screen asks you to select the folder that you would like the plugin to be

installed to on your system.

3. Now you can click 'Install', and after a few seconds the plugin will be installed.

4. Launch Maya.

Automatic Licensing during Installation




You can create a text file "license.txt" containing the license key in the same folder as yourinstaller. When the installer runs it will find this file and automatically license the product.

Silent Installation

You can run the installation silently by specifying the "/S" parameter. The installation folder

can be specified by adding “/D=C:\Program Files\MyFolder”.

2.2.2 Windows Uninstalling Simply run the uninstaller from the Start Menu in "RenderHeads , UVAutoRatio 2.0 Pro".

2.2.3 Linux Installation

1. Decompress the archive to the directory where you want the plugin to live. Thisshould be somewhere like "~/UVAutoRatio 2.0 Pro".

2. Open the file UVAutoRatioProModule.txt, and edit the path at the bottom to bethe folder where you've put this plugin in step 1.

3. Copy UVAutoRatioProModule.txt into the "modules" folder of Maya, which isusually found in:

/usr/autodesk/maya2008

(The folder may need to be created if it doesn't already exist)

4. Launch Maya

2.2.4 Linux Uninstalling Simply delete the folder containing the plugin, and remove the UVAutoRatioProModule.txt

from your Maya/modules folder.

2.2.5 Mac Installation

1. Decompress the archive to the directory where you want the plugin to live. This

should be somewhere like "/Applications/UVAutoRatioPro/".

2. Open the file UVAutoRatioProModule.txt, and edit the path at the bottom to be

the folder where you've put this plugin in step 1.

3. Copy UVAutoRatioProModule.txt into the "modules" folder of Maya, which is

usually found in:

/Applications/Autodesk/maya2008/maya.app/Contents/modules/




(The folder may need to be created if it doesn't already exist)(To open maya.app, go the the gear icon in Finder and click "Show Package

Contents")

4. Launch Maya.

2.2.6 Mac Uninstalling Simply delete the folder containing the plugin, and remove the UVAutoRatioProModule.txt

from your maya.app/Contents/modules folder.

2.2.7 Network Installation UVAutoRatio Pro can also be installed centrally on a server with all the clients just accessing

that single instance of the software. This makes maintaining software versions andupgrades much easier in a multi-user environment.

On the server copy over all the UVAutoRatio files and make the folder publically available.

For each client you'll need to create an entry for the plugin in their /modules folder pointingto the plugin location on the server.

For more information on how to do this please contact RenderHeads.




2.3 Launching the Plugin

To launch the plugin type "UVAutoRatioProUI" into the command-line window in

Maya. This will display the UVAutoRatio window.

To save typing you may want to add this command to your shelf. The user interface has

a button in the settings tab labelled "Add to Shelf" which will add this command to the

current shelf using it's own icon graphic.

The button icon added to the shelf:




2.4 Licensing UVAutoRatio Pro won't work until it has been given a valid license key.

To obtain and install a license key:

1.

Go to the "About" tab and click "Enter NewKey", this will bring up the licensing window:

2. If you don't already have a license key, you can either click "Get 15-Day Free TrialKey" which will take you to the website where you can claim your free trial key

or "Purchase Key" to launch the license shop website.

The license key will something like this:

[email protected](1 user license)-Bill Lumbergh-Initech-UVAutoRatio 2.0

Pro-3ABC-5Q2T-6A0N-2C13-0I0K-5Q2T-6A0N-9Z13-634M-0A4S-5Z1Y-3I3W




This whole key must be entered

3. Once you have a key, paste it into the box below. You can use CTRL-V to paste itsince right-click doesn't work in this Maya text box.

4. Click 'OK'.

Your copy of UVAutoRatio will then be licensed, as indicated by this window:

If this doesn't appear and you're having problems getting your license to work, please

contact RenderHeads Support ([email protected]).

3. QuickStart The plugin launches with the most important controls visible:

Unifying Texture Ratio Across Multiple Objects

1. Select the meshes you want to process.

2. Click 'Apply to Objects'.


mailto:[email protected]








Unifying Texture Ratio Across Multiple Shells

1. Select the shells you want to process so they have the same ratio.

2. Click 'Apply to Shells'.

Matching the Texture Ratio of Multiple Objects to theTexture Ratio of a Specific Object

1. Select the object that has the desired texture ratio.

2. Click 'Set Ratio from Selection'.

3. Select the objects (or at least one component in each object) you want to change.

4. Click 'Apply to Objects'.

Matching the Texture Ratio of Multiple UV Shells to theTexture Ratio of a Specific UV Shell

1. Select the UV shell that has the desired texture ratio.

2. Click 'Set Ratio from Selection'.

3. Select the UV shells (or at least one component in each shell) you want to change.

4. Click 'Apply to Shells'.

4. The User Interface

The user interface is divided into 3 tabbed sections:

● UVAutoRatio - where the plugin is actually operated from.

● Settings - holds all the options for the main operations.

● About - displays information about the plugin, license and developers.

4.1 UVAutoRatio Tab 4.1.1 Ratio Tool - Where the action happens




This is the most important panel in the whole interface as it contains the buttons: 'Apply to

Objects' and 'Apply to Shells'. These are the two main operations that the plugin performs.

Running either of these operations will result in the UVs of the selection being scaled (andperhaps translated to fix overlapping UV shells if that option is selected).

The UVs are scaled so the ratio between the selected 3D area and it's 2D texture areamatches (or at least comes extremely close to) the ratio specified in the box 'Current Ratio'.

Setting the Ratio

The value in 'Current Ratio' can be manually edited, or it can be set to the ratio of the

current selection by clicking 'Set Ratio from Selection'. This will work with any selection,

from a bunch of polygon meshes to a single face. This can be very useful in making otherobjects/shells match the ratio of another object/shell/selection.

Applying the Ratio

'Apply to Objects' will scale the UVs of each selected object (polygon mesh). Whole objects

don't have to be selected for this to work - if the selection is made up of components of anobject (vertices, edges, UVs, faces, etc) it will still operate on the entire object.

'Apply to Shells' will scale the UVs of the selected UV shells so they have the desired ratio.If the selection just contains components (vertices, edges, UVs, faces, etc) the UV shell that

contains them will be processed. If an object is selected then all of it's UV shells will beprocessed.

Ratio Presets




By clicking on the preset button presets can be saved and managed.

4.1.2 Other Tools

Fix Shell Overlaps

This button will try to move overlapping UV shells apart so they are no longer overlapping.It can be pressed repeatedly to move the shells apart. This option can be set to

automatically happen after the Apply to Objects or Apply to Shells from the Settings tab,but it is available as a button here for easier workflow. There are further options for the

settings in the Settings tab.

Normalise This is similar to Maya's own UV Normalise command except it also works with multiple

objects selected. This allows you to noramlise the UV's of mutliple objects without having tocombine them. There is an option whether to maintain the aspect ratio of the UV's

UV Shell Auto-Selection Tool




Ticking this checkbox will make any component selection automatically propagate theselection to that entire UV shell.

4.1.3 UV Shell Finder Tool - Lists UV shells in the selection

This is a handy tool that displays each UV shell in the selection and then allows you to select

the shells simply by selecting items in the list.

Multiple selection is supported, and each UV shell you select in the list will be added to thecurrent selection.

Double clicking on an item in the list will zoom the camera to that UV shell (just like the

hotkey 'F' in Maya).

This tool can be used to easily select UV shells for capturing the ratio of that shell using 'Set

Ratio from Selection', or it can be used as an easy way to build up a selection of shells to beprocessed.

4.1.4 UV Tools - Handy shortcuts

This panel is a collection of shortcuts to tools (most of them internal Maya ones) commonlyused in conjunction with UVAutoRatio, placed here for quick and easy access.

Left clicking will apply the tool. Tools with options will display a small icon next to thecursor when hovered over, indicating that it can be right-clicked to bring up the tooloptions.

Right-clicking on these tool buttons will open up their options window.

Ratio Inspector




Ratio Inspector is the only non-Maya tool. This handy tool opens up in a new window andwill show you the surface and texture area of anything as you select it. It also shows you

the ratio between the two areas.

4.2 Settings Tab 4.2.1 UV Set Settings - Specifying which UV set to operate on

By default the UVAutoRatio Pro will operate on the 'current' UV Set of a mesh. Thesesettings allow you to specify alternative UV Sets to operate on.

The current UV Set in Maya is a per-mesh property and can be set in the texture editor.

Since the current UV Set can vary between meshes it can be useful to force the plugin to aUV Set of a specific name.

To manually specify the UV set to use:

1. Select the 'Manually select UV Set' radio button.

2. Select the mesh that has the desired UV Set.

3. Click 'Update UV Set List from Selection' to fill the box with the list of UV Sets themesh contains.




4. Now select the desired UV Set from the list.

If you do manually specify the UV Set, you can also define what happens when the

plugin encounters a mesh without the named UV Set. The mesh can either be skipped orprocessed using it's current UV Set. If any meshes are skipped, a warning will be logged to

the script editor window showing which meshes were not processed.

4.2.2 Display Options

These display options apply to the UV Shell Finder Tool. When selecting UV shells from the

list they can either be displayed as UVs or faces.

4.2.3 Layout Options - Automatically fixes overlapping UV shells

When UV shells are scaled up they can sometimes overlap each other. This option decides

what the plugin does about this.

The 'Move shells to fix overlaps' option does what it says. This is similar to the option inMaya's 'UV Layout' command, however instead of completely rearranging the UV shells

it will preserve the original layout of the shells relative to each other. Even if the shells

already have the desired ratio, having this option on will fix overlapping shells.

Iterations is how many times layout options runs internally.

Step Size is the distance it tries to move the shells each time it runs an iteration.Increasing this number will decrease the time it takes to solve the layout, however the

results will be less accurate.

Padding is the desired minimum distance between shells.




The images below shows UV shells that are overlapping, and the automatically fixed result:

Before - shells are overlapping




After - Overlapping fixed while maintaining the original layout

4.2.4 Misc Options

Scaling Axis:




Usually the UVAutoRatio 2.0 Pro will scale the object/shell equally in both horizontal andvertical directions to find the scale which gives the desired ratio. These options allow you to

limit the scaling to either the horizontal or vertical axis.

Logging Verbosity:

If "Verbose Output" is enabled the plugin will write detailed information into the script editor

output window about it's internal operations. This might be interesting/useful to advancedusers. Here is an example of the data it displays:

Save Settings:

By default the plugin will remember the last used settings and will restore them whenyou use the plugin in future. This can be disabled by checking this "Reset Settings on

Startup" option.

Shelf:The "Add To Shelf" button will add a shortcut to the MEL

command "UVAutoRatioProUI;" to the current shelf.

Reset Settings:

Finally the settings can all be returned this their default state by pressing this button.

4.3.5 Auto-Update Options

4.3 About Tab

The About tab is pretty straightforward:




The license panel displays the details of the currently installed license. It also allows new

keys to be entered and the 'Purchase Key' button will launch the RenderHeads Store in the

default web browser.The plugin panel displays information about the plugin. This is very useful for

troubleshooting. When reporting a problem, please include this data in your query.

Finally there are some links to web pages related to this plugin. This is useful for checkingfor updates and bugfixes. The User Group is an online community where users can post

their opinions and queries, make feature requests, show off what they've used the plugin

for, get access to upcoming beta versions and interact with the developers directly.




5. Other

5.1 Tips 5.1.1 Performance Clearing history will improve the performance of the plugin

5.1.2 How do I add support for my language to UVAutoRatio? UVAutoRatio supports multiple langauges through a .res.mel resource files which contains

all the text strings used by the plugin. You simply need to copy this resource file andmodify the text strings.

1. run the MEL command "about -uiLanguage;" to discover the language name that Maya

is using. For Japanese it would be "ja_JP".

2. Create a folder of this name in the /resources/ folder of UVAutoRatio installation

folder. (/resources/ja_JP for example)

3. Copy "/scripts/UVAutoRatioPro.res.mel" to this location.

4. Translate the text into your own language.

Maya will then run the plugin in your language.

If you do translate the plugin into your language please let us know so we can share it with

the rest of the community.

5.2 Known Issues

5.2.1 "Can't perform polyMoveUV on Selection"

There have been reports of some models that don't work with the plugin, and output:

// Warning: line 1: Can't perform polyMoveUV1 on selection //

We have tracked this down to a bug in Maya where it has an invalid current uvset assignedto the mesh. To fix it, simply select the mesh, open the Texture Editor window, go to the

UVSet menu and select the UV set (even if it's already selected).

5.3 Scripting




It is also possible script UVAutoRatio Pro to include it into a workflow or custom pipeline.Below is a list of the commands that come with UVAutoRatio Pro and descriptions of their

parameters.

5.3.1 GetSurfaceUVArea Command

This command uses the current selection and returns 3 floats: the 3d surface area, the 2dtexture area, the ratio of surface area / texture area. Its parameters are:

Short name Long name Value type Description

-us -uvSetName string The name of the UVset to use (optional)

-fb -fallback If the named UVset is not found in a

mesh, use the default

UV set instead of

skipping it (optional-hlp -help Displays this

parameter list

5.3.2 UVAutoRatioPro Command

This is the main command which does the UV scaling and UV shell manipulation. Itsparameters are:

Short name Long name Value type Description

-hlp -help Displays thisparameter list

-r -ratio float Desired 3D : 2D ratio

-us -uvSetName string The name of the UVset to use (optional)

-fb -fallback If the named UVset is not found in a

mesh, use the default

UV set instead of skipping it (optional)

-op -operation integer 0 = whole mesh, 1 =uv shell

-vb -verbose Display output

(optional), defaultfalse

-lay -layout Layout UV shells to

prevent overlapping(optional), default

true




-ss -skipscale Skip the scaling

operation (useful if

you only want to fixlayout) (optional)

-osh -onlyScaleH Restrict scaling of UVs to horizontal axis

(optional), default

false

-osv -onlyScaleV Restrict scaling of

UVs to vertical axis(optional), default

false

6. Usage Examples

6.1 Example 1 Lets say we have 4 'rocks' all different scales and using the same texture, looking

something like this:




We can see that the large 'rock' is using the same amount of texture area as all the othersmaller 'rocks'. But we'd really like the texture usage to be proportional to the area of the

mesh. Here are some reasons why:

1. We want the features in the texture to be the same size across the rocks. A crack ora grain shouldn't really scale if they're made of the same material.

2. It is a waste of processing power to have small objects using disproportionately large

regions of the texture when they don't need to.

So we'll run UVAutoRatio to unify the UV ratio across multiple objects, producing this result:




6.2 Example 2 You've finally finished unwrapping/pelting your UV shells and you have something like this:




Now you have to manually inspect each shell and try to guess what size to scale it so

they're all proportional. This is a serious drag! You want to do this for a few reasons

though:

1. You want to divide up your texture in proportion to how much of it will be seen in the3D world, otherwise it's a waste. The less texture waste there is, the more pixels you

can dedicate to the details.

2. If it's a character you might want to give the head/face double the resolution

compared to the other parts.

Instead let UVAutoRatio do it for you:




7. Release Notes

Version 2.6.x - ?

● Send us your suggestions.

Version 2.5.4 - December 2012

● Added support for Maya 2013 to Mac

Version 2.5.4 - May 2012

● Added support for Maya 2013 to Windows

● Added support for Maya 2012 to Windows and Mac

Version 2.5.0 - August 2010

● Added support for Maya 2011

● Installer can install silently and automatically license keys

● Added to documentation about how to translate UVAutoRatio into your own languageby using the localisation system

Version 2.4.5 - 13 October 2009

● Added support for Maya 2010

● Fixed crash bug when using the plugin in batch mode

Version 2.4.2 - 25 March 2009

● Added ability to save and load ratio presets to file

● Fixed compatability issues with Maya versions prior to 8.0

Version 2.4.0 - 03 March 2009

● Features:

○ Added ratio preset system:








○ Exposed more Layout options for fixing overlapping UVs:

○ The tool for fixing UV Shell overlaps now works with multiple objects too

○ Added a Normalise UV tool that works across multiple objects

○ Multi-language support

○ Better UI options for faster workflow:




● Improvements:

○ Progress bar updates better and gives better indication of progress

○ When cancelling the operation the logging of skipped shells now only happens

when Verbose Output is enabled.

○ Cancelling during overlap fixing is much more responsive

○ Added option for showing internal timings (for profiling)

○ Better Maya version detection

○ Installer now installs for all versions of Maya automatically● Bugs:

○ Fixed bug where UV Editor didn't hide when fixing overlapping shells

○ Fixing overlapping UVs now also obeys Verbose Output setting

Version 2.3.1 - 22 October 2008

● Maya 2009 support

● Mac OS X PPC support fixed

Version 2.3 - 11 September 2008




● Added Mac OS-X support:

● Added automatic version update notification system:

●

Improved licenseentry mechanism

● Windows installer now warns if maya.exe is running

● Added scripting info to documentation

Version 2.2.1 - 15 August 2008

● UV Shell Finder displays the shells with much more useful and friendly information

● Frames Remember their Collapsed State

● License Type Displayed

● Improved Documentation

Version 2.2 - 24 June 2008




● Linux Support added

We add support for Maya 8.0, 8.5 and 2008 on 32-bit and 64-bit machines.

● Windows 64-bit support for Maya 8.0

Previously we didn't support 64-bit for Maya 8.0.

● Fixed Zero Area Bug

Fixed a bug with handling objects containging faces with zero area.

● Fixed a Minor Memory Leak Bug

● Minor Improvements to UI

● Improved Documentation

Version 2.1 - 24 April 2008

● Auto-Hide Texture Editor Option

There is now a new option to automatically hide and then reshow the texture editorwindow while the plugin is doing it's work. This makes the plugin work a lot faster for

high polygon meshes.

● Speed Increase

We've increased the speed of the case where your meshes has overlapping UV shells,and you use the option to automatically fix overlapping shells. This now takes half thetime.

● Progress Bar

Added a progress window. This is useful for high polygons meshes that may takesome time, gives reassurance that the Maya hasn't frozen.




● Interruptable

The plugin can now be interrupted. So if you made a mistake and told it to do some

horrendous amount of work you can just hit the escape key and it'll stop.

● Everything Else

A new button to just run "fix overlapping UV shells".

Pressing the UV Texture button when the window is open will now hide the window.

The same goes for the Ratio Inspector.

The licensing changed slightly, so you may need to re-enter your key again.

Version 2.0 - 2 April 2008

● Initial Release




8. Support

Website

UVAutoRatio has it's own website where updates and news can be found:

http://www.uvAutoRatio.com

UVAutoRatio Discussion Forum

Use the discussion forum to post your questions, opinions, submit feature requests, reportbugs and show off ways you've used the plugin:

http://www.RenderHeads.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=4

RenderHeads Details

For further support please contact the developers directly:

Web: www.renderheads.com

Email: [email protected]

Phone: +447970692070


http://www.renderheads.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=4




































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