Strata UV Mapping


I am putting together a wish list for updating my software tool box
and I wanted to get some updated information on UV texture mapping
software. I know it has been talked about here but I wanted to see if
anyone knew what the latest scoop was on the topic?. I want to be able
to import a model into Strata and be able to generate a Strata Usable
UV texture file that I can edit with Photoshop. I know I am behind the
curve on this but I have promised myself a G5 Dual Core 2Ghz for
Christmas and I want to try and have everything I need to update ready.



Wings is the best (free) way to do UV mapping to work with Strata.

Strata will currently import OBJ and VRML with UVs, and honor them just fine
as long as you don't try to do a bunch of additional modeling in Strata. If
you do, you have to export again and rework the UVs.

Strata 4.2's only export format (for now!) that will export UVs is VRML. The
only application I have found that will import strata VRML and allow you to
rework the UV map is BodyPaint. It works great, but is expensive, and UV
mapping is not a trivial learning process. I would not recommend spending
the money on it unless you have gotten as far as you can with Wings and know
exactly what you need beyond that.

If you are working with Poser figures, you may want to look at UV Mapper
rather than Wings. Wings cannot handle more recent Poser figures, they are
too large, and Wings often mangles the inside-outside surfaces and ruins the
figures. UV Mapper is mostly just good for grabbing and organizing existing
UV layouts, but it can do some simple mapping, too.

Richardsan is right, more and more applications are doing UV layouts of some
sort, strata is behind on this. I can at least say that just about any app
that can do UV layout will in the future be able to work with Strata
geometry.

Silo is adding UV tools at the next release, which was supposed to be by end
of this year. I wouldn't be surprised if that isn't delayed until beginning
of next year. We don't know how good silo's UV mapping will be yet,but silo
so far is a better companion to Poser than Wings, because Silo does not have
the closed mesh requirements that wings has. Silo can easily handle larger
meshes than Wings, which is also helpful with Poser.

My current pipeline is model in Silo, possibly do a little preliminary UV
layout in wings, do serious UV layout in BodyPaint. (I sometimes do a thing
or two in UVMapper, too, but I found a plug-in for BP that pretty much
obviates any need for UVM.) I use either VRML or OBJ to take the model from
BP to Strata. The newest release of BP will write FBX, too, which I may
switch to because it displays a preview in the finder.

What Silo brings with the next release will be very interesting to see.

If you don't mind throwing a PC into the mix, you have additional options.
If you want to keep it all on the G5, you could pick up something from the
above. I don't recommend buying BodyPaint unless you feel you really need
it.

There are a couple of threads on the café about strata 5.0. You might want
to check them out. There is no release date for that, but it is coming.

--
Jean

Posted: Wed - November 16, 2005 at 05:20 PM          

©