User Guide: Move/Scale/Rotate

Set the values you want to apply, then click on Move, Scale or Rotate to transform all picked shells. If you want to apply the transforms to one or more boxes and their contents, pick the boxes by LMB clicking on one corner. If no shells are picked, all unlocked flattened shells are modified.

If you want to quickly move shells around by tile units, click the N, E, S, W or diagonal buttons to move them in that direction.

The Pivot options are Origin (rotate/scale around the world origin u=0, v=0), or Shell (rotate/scale about each shell's center point), or Tile (rotate/scale about the center of the tile that each shell is currently in).

Use the Invert button to invert all values so you can quickly transform shells back to where they were, and the Reset button resets the field values back to their defaults.

The three green buttons to the bottom left represent the left, middle and right mouse buttons. By default these are all on, indicating that you can rotate (left), translate (middle) and scale (right) shells by holding down the Space key. Click on any one of the green buttons to turn that function off. For example, if you don't want to accidentally scale any shells, click the third button so it turns gray.

Align To Axes/Vertical: Rotate selected shells so that, on average, their polygons are aligned with the U and V axes, or vertically within the 3D space.

Rescale U & V: Use these buttons if you want to rescale shells so that their size in UV matches that in 3D. For example, if you load an OBJ with existing UVs and some shells are red and others are blue, clicking on the & button will rescale each of them up or down until they are closer to green in shading. Click on the U or V buttons if you only want to scale in that direction. As with the other transform buttons above, the rescale will only affect picked shells, or all unlocked shells if none are picked. [Example]

As A Group: Tick this option and all selected shells are scaled by the same amount, and around the center of the group bounding box. This keeps them the same relative size and in the same relative position to each other.

Fit To Sqr: Use these buttons if you want to rescale shells or boxes so that they fill the UV square. Clicking on U will rescale the picked shells or boxes equally in the U and V directions, but so their widths fit the square. Clicking on V will also rescale equally, but so their heights fit the square. Clicking on | will rescale equally so that the picked shells or boxes fit completely within the square. And finally, clicking on & will rescale unequally so that both the widths and heights fit the square. By default everything will crowd into the 0 to 1 UV square, but if you enable the Pack tool's "Lock All To Tile" option, then each rescaled shell or box stays in its current tile.

As A Group: Tick this option and all selected shells are fitted to the tile as a group. This keeps them the same relative size and in the same relative position to each other.

Clicking the Fit To Sqr button itself launches a combined Pack and Fit over all of the UV tiles. Unlike the buttons just described, which fit individual or grouped shells to a single UV square, this one operates on all of shells over all UV tiles. [Example]

By default, the & option indicates that its OK for the affected shells to be scaled up or down to fit the tile. However, if you select < then the fit for any one tile will succeed only when shells need to be made smaller, and selecting > means shells will only ever be made larger.

Also note that the Pack tool is used, so the current pack settings apply. If rotations are turned on, then the total allocated search time is divided equally among the number of tiles being fitted.

Fit To Grid: Use these buttons if you want to rescale shells so their bounding boxes are aligned perfectly with the current snapping grid. Clicking on < will always make shells smaller to make them fit to the grid. Clicking on > will always make shells larger to fit. Clicking on | will resize shells to the closest grid line (i.e. they can be scaled up or down).

Set Size: When an object is loaded into UVLayout, the surface area is computed and an initial real-world to UV scaling is decided upon so that the flattened out object fills the UV square. When the UV shells are packed, this scaling is also adjusted. The current UV scaling is shown in the Set Size field, and it is the size of the UV square in real-world dimensions. You can edit this value to set the current size of the UV square if you wish; remember to type Enter to make any value changes active.

Green Balance: If one or more of your shells are red or blue tinted for whatever reason, click this and all shells are adjusted so that the average of the selected shells is green (i.e. at the "correct" scale). If no shells are selected, then the scale of all visible shells is used to determine the average value. [Example]

[Professional Version Only]

Local Scaling

Normally UV shells in UVLayout are resized so that the texture scale is even across the entire surface; this is what the Rescale buttons above do. This means that when the checker texture is applied, all squares appear as close to the same size as possible.

Sometimes however you may want to assign increased or reduced scales to specific parts. Some examples would be increased scale of UVs in a creature's face and hands to get greater detail there, but reduced scale for the inside of the mouth where very little detail is required.

In previous versions of UVLayout it was possible to do this to a degree by simply scaling shells up and down, but they were rescaled back to their original size if any further flattening/optimizing was performed. It was also quite difficult to get a smooth transition between mixed scales within a single shell.

You you can now create and edit these mixed scale UVs using the following buttons.

Local: When one or more shells are picked, all are locally scaled together so that, on average, they are closer to green; in this situation, individual shells may still show some red or blue shift, and these will be rescaled when optimized. When no shells are picked, all unlocked shells are individually processed and there will be no remaining red or blue shifts.

To use this tool, first use Scale above or Space-RMB to resize a shell (it will shift to red/blue as you scale it down/up), next Pick that shell with the LMB, then click on Local and it will shift back to green without changing size. If you then go to the 3D view and turn on the checker texture, you'll see that the squares in that part of the surface are a different size. If you re-flatten/optimize that shell, it won't change its size.

At any time you can see what local scaling has been applied by toggling the small white button to the right of Local. Blue shading indicates that those polys are scaled up, which will give you more detail in that area; red shading is scaled down, giving you less detail.

Smooth: Shells with mixed scale UVs can be welded together and re-flattened, but at the junction between the two the UVs may be more distorted than usual because of the sudden change in scale. To fix this, click on the Smooth button; the local scaling will be averaged out across the junction, creating a more gentle transition after the shell is re-flattened.

Reset: To remove any local scaling from picked shells, use Reset.

Dist: Click this button and the polys of all LMB selected shells will be locally scaled according to their distance from the camera. Polys furthest away are scaled by the Black value, and the closest ones get the White scaling value. If no shells are selected, then the polys of all visible shells are scaled. Shells will need to be re-scaled or optimized for the local scaling to take effect.

Face: Click this and polys will be locally scaled according to how they face the camera. Polys facing away are scaled by the Black value, and those facing towards the camera get the White scaling value. Again, re-scale or optimize to apply the local scaling effect.

Map: Click the arrow to select an image file, and then the grayscale values of the image are applied as local scale values to all visible flattened polys. The position of each poly in UV space is mapped onto that position in the image to work out how its to be scaled. The Black number value (0.5 by default) is the local scaling value for black pixels, and the White number (2.0 by default) is the value applied for white pixels. Re-scale or optimize to apply the local scaling effect.

Retrieved from "http://doc.uvlayout.com/User_Guide:_Move/Scale/Rotate"

 : By default, the '''&''' option indicates that its OK for the affected shells to be scaled up or down to fit the tile. However, if you select '''<''' then the fit for any one tile will succeed only when shells need to be made smaller, and selecting '''>''' means shells will only ever be made larger.
-: Also note that as the Pack tool is used, the current pack settings apply. If rotations are turned on, then the total allocated search time is divided equally among the number of tiles being fitted.
+: Also note that the Pack tool is used, so the current pack settings apply. If rotations are turned on, then the total allocated search time is divided equally among the number of tiles being fitted.
 ; Fit To Grid : Use these buttons if you want to rescale shells so their bounding boxes are aligned perfectly with the current snapping grid. Clicking on '''<''' will always make shells smaller to make them fit to the grid. Clicking on '''>''' will always make shells larger to fit. Clicking on '''|''' will resize shells to the closest grid line (i.e. they can be scaled up or down).