Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
•
Segment by Part
does the same thing
but with the polygon groupings (parts)
you've got set up.
An odd thing with atlas maps is that on the
map itself, not every polygon has points to
drag around. When two or more polygons
share
a point, only
one
polygon has that
point represented on the atlas map! This
would mean trouble when tweaking an atlas
map or laying one out by hand, if it weren't
for Unweld.
Detail | Points | Unweld
takes any
point shared by more than one polygon and
“breaks it apart” into as many exact copies
as there need to be so each polygon “owns”
one of the copies. After using Unweld on a
selection, no one point (of that selection) is
“owned” by more than one polygon. (So,
after doing this, forget about using Select
Connected until you reunite all the points
again.)
Note
After using Unweld to tweak your UV map,
you use Detail | Points | Merge Points with
the Range set to Automatic to “re-fuse” all
the points that are in
exactly the same posi-
tion
.
This could cause smoothing problems
where the surfaces of a Boolean operation
meet (and you have purposely not merged
those points). If you know you're going to
want to make an atlas UV map for an object
that for whatever reason has points sitting
exactly
on top of one another, and they need
to stay that way, set these points as part of a
Point Selection Set so you can unweld them
again after merging everything back into
one piece after adjusting your atlas map.
Figure 5-68: After having used Unweld, the faces of the cube can be
moved, rotated, scaled, and generally “pushed about,” so you get the
exact look on your object you are trying to achieve.
How do the default settings for creating an
atlas map work for something complex, like
a character? Not too well for this artist's
tastes. Here is a quick and simple way I
would set up Wolfie's head for an atlas map:
1.
exactly
in the same space that we will
need to watch out for after we tweak
our atlas map layout. The Information
window that comes up after we merge
points tells us that there were “no
points eliminated,” which means no
points were in exactly the same space.
We can proceed without worrying
about messing something up when we
merge points later.
Load
Objects\Chapter05\Cartoon-
WolfHead.lwo
.
2.
Select
Merge Points | Automatic
—
just to see if there are any points lying
