[Bf-committers] GSoC Idea: Improving Automatic UV Unwrapping

[Philip Holzmann]

In case you are looking for ideas to add to the GSoC ideas list:
Here's a self-contained project somebody could work on.

"Improving Automatic UV Unwrapping"


Benefits: Higher quality automatic UV unwrapping saves artist time, 
especially for prototypes and sculpts.

Description:
Implement an algorithm that generates a UV projection with a relatively 
high quality.
Blender already has some forms of automatic UV unwrapping, for example 
the "Smart UV Project" script.
Possible improvements could include (i. e. downsides of the current 
implementation):
- Work efficiently, even with high poly models
- Do not generate tiny UV islands (i. e. those consisting of only one or 
two faces. They could be merged with another island in most cases.)
- Generate preferably rectangular islands, break up big islands. This 
will improve the UV packing results.

Requirements: Python. C may also be required for performance reasons.

Difficulty: Medium?

Possible mentors: ???