A Script Post: Automatic Planar UV Unfold
So welcome to my first developer/artist blog post! I have documented a few things before, but all of them were for a previous job with private information policies. Now I'll be documenting my journey as a CG Artist who likes technical stuff. Hopefully, you will get something out of this when you read it!
Well, I have been working a lot on this model and my organizing my demo reel. This leads to not having much time to rig characters, which is what I want to focus on. However, in my view, a good technical artist must strive to understand all aspects of the production pipeline. That way, the tech artist can aid his teammates before even a problem arises. With that being said, I'm now taking every opportunity I see to make scripts that help with repetitive or annoying tasks. Here is one example of what I came up with when working with my Tauren model.
Automatic Planar UV Unfold.
*PYTHON*
Video Example
When the time came up to do UVs coordinates, I had a bit of dread about it. There are a few plate objects that needed to be worked on. Most are identical, so that makes things easier. Nevertheless, I still haven't decided how I was going to approach this. Either do overlapping techniques or separate by materials. Whatever it was, I had to unwrap the whole thing anyway. I went with best plane fit projection since most of the armor shapes were created from a plane. Once I did the second piece, it became clear that I could automatize this process. The hardest part was figuring out how to select all the polygons of any mesh. The"polyProjection" command needs to have chosen poly faces, or it wouldn’t work. So after a little research on various non-related blogs, I found my answer, which is in the command parenthesis of line #6. The + '.f[0:*]' added in the polyProjection command will select any number of faces of a polymesh object. Once the projection was made, the rest was easy. I added the "unfold3d", "3dLayout" and "deleteHistory" commands so I wouldn't have to do those too. This tool saved me some headaches and time!
Well, that's all for now. Hopefully, you can find some use for it. It’s not much, but its honest work, I guess, haha! I have some other ideas, but as of right now I don't need them. However, once I need them or have spare time, eventually I will work on them and share my results here!
If you like this post, be sure to follow me on social media, where I would announce updates on my blog posts. I have Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, so take your pick!
Comments