[Bf-funboard] Selection keys and UV maps

[Campbell Barton]

Hi Ruth,

Will try to answer you're questions inline...

On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 6:41 PM, Ruth Ivimey-Cook <ruth at ivimey.org> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I'm a newbie Blender user -- been using it privately for 18 months or so
> -- and am posting here as I'm not sure how else to ask for changes. I
> hope I've found the right place. I'm using Blender currently for static
> model creation, using the Windows 7 64 bit version.
>
> 1. The first is the "b"  box select action. I note from recent archives
> that others have posted about being consistent, well, I am always
> finding that I have to restart a box-select because I've forgotten to
> deselect the previous thing: indeed, sometimes my model has evidence I
> didn't deselect in time. Could the box select be changed such that
> unmodified, the items selected replace the current selection, and, for
> example, Shift-B is needed to extend the existing selection?

Your comment is valid, this kind of area we have some trouble managing
at the moment - since its configurable you can change disable `Extend`
option in the keymap - but this is a weak solution for general issue
of keymaps being inconsistent.

Nathan Vegdahl has been working on a new improved keymap to deal with
issues in our existing one, but this is very different and not sure
its in a usable state right now.

> 2. The models I am making right now are almost exclusively of things
> with flat and mostly rectangular faces. When trying to make UV maps of
> these, the existing tools far too often either distort the aspect ratio
> of the original face, or utterly distort it out of recognition. As
> normally the texture is coming from real life (eg a wall), neither
> action is acceptable as the resultant distortion or scaling will be
> quite obvious, so I have to go round individually tweaking things:
> extremely laborious.

Blender has quite a few tools to handle these cases
- Select a face, Shift+G, Co-planer OR Normals, Then Ukey - project from view.

- UV project modifier (nice if you want to edit without distoring UVs)

- Ukey - smart uv unwrap

- Ukey - follow active quads (relies on a grid topology)


> - I would like a UV mapping "mode" which above all else faithfully
> preserves the shape of every face (perhaps unless the operator
> explicitly moves UV vertices or edges). I realize this may mean it's
> impossible to map, so how about the following:
>
> - Modifying the view of the UV map window to actually be 3D? If a face
> can't map to the UV plane, it's extended out in the "W" direction and
> the operator can see it using the standard 3d movement tools used in the
> 3D window.

I don't really know what you mean here, it sounds like some quite
large changes - but would need a much more detailed description to
comment. Also, Id be interested to know the use case. - Why existing
tools fail.

> - Moreover, any edges that have either end with W<>0 are drawn in a
> different colour to make it clear they are not mapped in the requested
> manner.
>
> - As now, seams can be cut along edges so as to reduce the impossible
> mappings and this will interactively collapse model towards the UV
> plane. Also, edges can be "merged" such that they form a "non-seam" even
> if they didn't start off that way [am I right in thinking this is now
> possible in 2.64?]
>
> - Finally, as far as the rest of the stystem is concerned, the UV map is
> the UVW map projected back onto the UV plane - so for example a face
> mapped normal to UV will disappear.
>
> While in some ways this puts the onus back on the user to sort out the
> seams etc, it seems to me this would make it a lot easier to identify
> the problem areas.

Again, I dont really follow you exactly - there is a view option to
see UV distortion (where red is highly distorted and blue isnt).

> 3. The final UV issue I have: why can I only see the UV map for one
> object mapped onto a given texture image at a time? I can accept that I
> can only edit one object's UV map, but could I not see the mapping of
> any other object's faces onto that texture, so it's possible to align
> and optimise them properly?

Being able to edit multiple UV's at once would be really nice.

As a workaround for not having this there are a few options.
- Temp join many objects into one, unwrap - then copy UV's back to the
original objects, requires some scripts but works ok.

- There is an option in the image space "View -> Draw Other Objects".

Regards
-- 
- Campbell

>
> Best regards
> Ruth
>
> --
> Software Manager&  Engineer
> Tel: 01223 414180
> Blog: http://www.ivimey.org/blog
> LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/ruthivimeycook/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bf-funboard mailing list
> Bf-funboard at blender.org
> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-funboard