[creasia]

OK Pavol,

Here is the challenge. I will tell you the logic on how to get this to work, and let us know if it can be done...

If you are familiar with the UV mapping gizmo in 3DS max, it shows a polygon shape of what your UV mapping will be. This is what we need in SU.

1. In Sketchup I could create a component that I want UV mapping applied to

2. Drag a gizmo component from a new Maxwell gizmo component library and it would have been named to match the component you would want it to apply to (just like the proxy naming) so it would be 'componentname_UV'. It would then be scaled using the SU scale tool. (The gizmo could be on it's own hidden layer. Could it be inside the component???)

3. Test render it in Maxwell, as Sketchup still doesn't support UV mapping.

4. Look at your amazing rendering of the earth, baseball bat or rubic's cube!

Is there any way that I could say please that could get this built for us???

What do you guys think????

Shaun

[Sheik]

Did you test the UV Tools plugin?
http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf ... 80&t=10404
Note that it will start exporting one map & material per face, so export times will grow...

[creasia]

Thats cool, but ouch on the map per face problem.

[creasia]

I just tested it.

This is a huge step forward, and even previews in SU. I can even control the scale by editing the map. I did a test export. Unless the material were assigned in SU all the instances of the material would be a heck of a job in studio.

I would still like to have the control that would be available with a gizmo idea. What are your thoughts?

[pelias]

I agree - UV mapping is a missing piece in SketchUp and improvement there would mean a lot for rendering.

UV mapping tool is certainly possible - the actual UV mapping is not a problem (as UVtool shows), gizmo is area which will require more work but it is also a critical part (you need to have a control over UV mapping and the control also needs to be user friendly).

The issue which I cannot solve at this point is texture preview in SU vs. export individual textures per face. If preview is omitted than it is not a problem to generate UV coordinates from gizmo position at the export time (meaning in Maxwell plugin) - thus no problem with exporting many textures individually. If preview is important (and it would be certainly very nice to have it) than UV coordinates needs to be passed to SU core - and the result is export of multiple textures.

I will try to do a quick proof-of-concept implementation to see how well it works...

[x_site]

thanks pelias... that would be a great help.

[creasia]

I would love to see this even without the preview.

You might put the gizmo beside the show hidden geometry in the view menu, with a dropdown menu showing the UV type to the right.

I still think (as impressed as I am with Whaat's UV tool) that a gizmo system would be superior, and could translate into Maxwell Studio's mapping gizmo quite easily. I would still like to see planiar and Cube mapping gizmos as well as Sperical and Cylider Gizmos.

I am wondering if perhaps we could show the preview of the texture only on the gizmo? That may have less variables to program.

[pelias]

Yes - preview texture on gizmo is much easier to achieve that preview on the model itself.