contour stretch interprets the geometry as if it were a grid (with a U and V direction) – likely deformed in space walking the mesh lets you drive the layout by indicating the four corners of this grid. it works on the whole geometry at once – not on a single strip and the rest by extrapolation.
in order for this to work it has to find the borders of the object – in case of a tube you have to open it (select an edge loop and disconnect it) – for a donut you’ll have to open it in both directions if the road (a flat ribbon) is circular you’ll have to disconnect an edge loop as well. in the texture select the samples on an existing projection, click on walking the mesh, and in the viewport click the 4 points in the proper order (which can be difficult with complex forms) and then right click to end – then it should give you a rectangular UV layout. if the object is very twisted, or deviates a lot from the organised grid topology (forks in the road for instance) – it might fail or just give useless results. a long and winding road (pun intended) should work – but a labyrinthine road won’t – or would need to be approached one path at a time. also – it usually requires a serious workover to minimize distortions. (if you want you can mail me a geometry and I can have a go) From: Sebastien Sterling Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2013 10:55 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Old Tool UV strip projection ? I think it is the contour stretch UV's, but it doesn't seem to be working very well, i make my selection and add the projection but it doesn't tile it as you would expect along the other faces, they are all weird, am i missing a step ?. Yes peter, there is a Walking the mesh function in the Stretch contour UV's menu, however none of the options seem to do much, :(. anyone else use this recently ? On 18 December 2013 10:45, <[email protected]> wrote: I don’t remember the one you describe, but there was a gator-like tool, that would create UVs on a polymesh from a nearby nurbs surface. shouldn’t be too hard to replicate in XSI: extract an edge loop, create an extrusion (nurbs) and gator the UVs from the extrusion to the poly road. in XSI there is “walking the mesh” in the texture editor, which should be fine for a road – without the need to go through a nurbs object. when it works, its pretty cool. From: Sebastien Sterling Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2013 10:15 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Old Tool UV strip projection ? Hello list Recently i was approached by some maya people looking for an old tool in softimage (GASP!) They want to create uv's for a road, and they think there is some kind of tool in softimage, where if you create a projection for a strip of polygons on the road, there is some kind of automated function using the u and v coordinates which automatically finds the rest of the uv's. This would have been an old tool, ring any bells ?
