www.RenderHeads.com

Last Updated 13 October 2009

1.1 What Is This?
1.2 Key Features

2.1 Requirements
2.2 Installation

2.3 Launching the Plugin
2.4 Licensing

4.1 UVAutoRatio Tab

4.1.1 Ratio Tool
4.1.2 Other Tools
4.1.3 UV Shell Finder Tool
4.1.4 UV Tools

4.2 Settings Tab
4.3 About Tab

5.1 Tips
5.2 Known Issues

6.1 Example 1
6.2 Example 2

2.4 Licensing

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'.

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 the Texture 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 the Texture 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 (and perhaps 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 area matches (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 other objects/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 an object (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 be processed.

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 to combine 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 the selection to that entire UV shell.


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

4.1.4 UV Tools - Handy shortcuts
This panel is a collection of shortcuts to tools (most of them internal Maya ones) commonly used 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 the cursor when hovered over, indicating that it can be right-clicked to bring up the tool options.

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 and will 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.  These settings 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 a UV 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 the mesh 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 or processed 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 in Maya'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:

4.2.4 Misc Options

Scaling Axis:
Usually the UVAutoRatio 2.0 Pro will scale the object/shell equally in both horizontal and vertical 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 advanced users.  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 when you 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 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 checking for 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

Clearing history will improve the performance of the plugin


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 assigned to 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 2d texture 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 UV set to use (optional)
-fb	-fallback		If the named UV set 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.  Its parameters are:

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:


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 the 3D 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 2.5.x - ?

•   Send us your suggestions.

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 license entry mechanism
  
• Windows installer now warns if maya.exe is running
• Added scripting info to documentation
  

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

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 the time.

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

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.

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.

• 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, report bugs 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: contact@renderheads.com

Phone: +447970692070