ProUV - New UV unwrapping plugin optimized for sculpting

[speedym]

I'm proud to announce my first plug-in for Zbrush 3.1 - ProUV, advanced UV unwrapping optimized for sculpting. It gives a new spin to texture quality compared to GUV and AUV in all regards, and beats (boring) manual unwrapping in many regards.

ProUV is currently in "Open Beta" testing, which lasts until 14.06.2009 or until all major issues found are fixed. You can freely download and check out how the plug-in works, and all your feedback (opinions, feature requests, bug reports etc.) is quite welcome.

Official web site of the plug-in is: http://speedy.rs/prouv

[Disco Stu]

First of all congrats. I bet this was a lot of hard work.

The thing is tho... what need is there in optimized uvs for sculpting?
Sculpting doesnt care about uvs its the maps and external renderer that do.

And there is where the problems start.
I admit that the uvs look a lot less messy than the guv and auv tiles
but still the cuts are placed randomly and will get a problem when
rendering normal and displacement maps i guess.
Unwrella is pretty similar but that also is only good for diffuse textures.

It says realtime usage friendly but i cant really believe it.
Even with really good uvs seams can be a mayor issue in realtime
renderes.

Anyways ill check it out and post some pics if it really works good.

[speedym]

Stu, I suggest you give it a shot - I've tried a couple of normal and displacement map renders and they all come out much, much better then GUV and AUV. It turns out to be a similar gain to diffuse texture polypaint example on the web page.

I guess I should put up those other comparisons over there in due time.

ps. I'm sorry about the misunderstanding, when I said sculpting I thought in a broader sense and in the context of unwrapping ie. as in whenever you want to put the sculpted details to any type of texture, ProUV should give you a new level of quality. That's what I had in mind when making it, at least. :cool:

[Disco Stu]

ye i get it :D

[Mike Rhodes]

Went to the site and download page -- noticed that the plugin required Microsoft Direct X -- so is it safe to assume that this plugin is for Windows OS only?

[speedym]

Yep, only Windows version for now. I'm considering MacOS port later on, if there is enough demand for it. You could use 'parallels' to run it, though?

[Mike Rhodes]

Nope, no parallels or Boot Camp -- since the 3.1.2 version of ZBrush for Mac is out, so is the temporary Windows licence for ZB. Can't afford to pony up the cash for a second ZB license right now, in any case.

Best of luck with the plug in ! The comparision pictures really tell a great story about using your plugin.

[Silverwolf]

just tried it out and while the uvs did look rather good for a single button click however it looked quite horrible once i stepped up in subdivisions :(
seems like its changing the vertex order making the entire mesh explode like this
explode.jpg (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:zb_insimg%28%27142663%27,%27explode.jpg%27,1, 0%29)

[speedym]

Whoops, I'll get that fixed. Thanks!

OT: The lower image looks rather good. Is there any plug-in available for such mesh deformations, lets say, using fractals.. without polygon explosions? :D Or you could create it easily manually with built-in ZBrush tools? I'm wondering (out loud) if it would be worthwhile to make something of the kind..

[speedym]

Beta 2 is out on the downloads page, with the already subdivided model explosion bug - fixed. :)

[Prosthesis]

Will this help me get differnt maps. Bump. Diffuse, Displacement, etc. into external renderers?

Because that is something I've yet been able to do. There are so many projects I want to render outside of Zbrush but just don't get this UV thing.

[slocik]

can you say more about it, how does it select edges on witch it unwraps ?

[speedym]

It will raise the bump / displacement / etc. quality and perhaps even improve performance of the external rendering because UV map won't be fragmented in thousands of separate chunks.

I suggest you give it a shot. (.. and I'm curious about the results you'll get, too, please post them over here if you have a bit of time to spare.)

[Prosthesis]

EDIT:

Post edited. Question regarding internet connection answered by speedwym.

[speedym]

@slocik: Currently it does it algorithmically, to optimize both for least texture stretch and least number of separate chunks.

[speedym]

@Prosthesis: Because the "open beta" phase ends on 14.06.2009, it accesses the standard Internet Network Time Protocol (NTP, on port 13). This will be removed in the upcoming betas with a proper licensing system.

[Thomas_P]

Would like to test it on OS X ;)

Thomas

[Prosthesis]

Cool, edited previous post, Will try plugin from home from ousidte firewall.

[speedym]

Thanks! :) I hope you'll manage to export models unwrapped by ProUV to external renderers. :tu:

[speedym]

@Thomas_P: Maybe later this year. Perhaps use it in parallels for now? Would do good to post your wish to the official support forum - feature requests, it's easier to track the feature demand over there. ;)

[animasta]

This plugin is pretty nice. I tested it earlier by doing some poly painting, then exporting the obj and texture out, and loaded it all up in Lightwave. Everything worked just fine.

Too bad the beta expires later this month.

[speedym]

No worries, the final v1.0 release will be available until that date (barring any serious bugs which need fixing cropping up in the last moment).

ps. I've put a new comparison on the home page (http://speedy.rs/prouv): normal mapping with external rendering - click on the image to see it in full size.

[Silverwolf]

done some tests myself on a full character just to see how it held up with normalmaps using blenders glsl shaders.
the default settings might have a bit to much stretching going on but after some tweaking it actually looks quite good i still prefer the one i did manually in blender tho but for just a single click not to bad

UVComparison.JPG (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:zb_insimg%28%27%27,%27UVComparison.JPG%27,1,0 %29)
UVComparison2.JPG (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:zb_insimg%28%27%27,%27UVComparison2.JPG%27,1, 0%29)

[speedym]

Great stuff, its holding quite good compared to boring manual unwrapping!

Hope it will save you some significant time which you would spend on such technical non-creative tasks. :cool:

[animasta]

I don't know if this is a bug or not, but even though I set my texture size to 2048x2048, it always comes out as 1024x1024.

[Silverwolf]

you need to create a blank texture before by going into the texture palette and set the size there and press new to get any other size than 1024 when you crate a normalmap or transfer your polypaint to a texture

[florencepapillon]

There will be a Mac version as well ?

[pummumu]

The .ProUV.exe says it cant find ZB3 installed on my machine, ahtough it resides in default location:
C:\Program Files\Pixologic\ZBrush3

Does anyone know why it gives me the error?


thanks,
Herb

[speedym]

@florencepapillon: Not in the first version. Depending on the user demand, I might do it later during the year. Perhaps you could use it via parallels?

[speedym]

@pummumu: I have a few ideas - will send you a private message about it...

[El Burritoh]

I was surprised at how well this worked. It gave us UVs that one could actually paint on in PS. I guess the only thing we don't have direct control over is the location of the seams. It takes a human eye to decide where to place a seam. I'll keep using the beta for the next few days and see how it performs. So far so good though. Good work.

[speedym]

Cheers, glad to hear it is useful! :)

Direct seams control will be coming along in the future versions. What do you think about seams setup via poly-groups? Would it work? Or is there a better way for the artists to define them inside ZBrush?

I'm currently doing the licensing system, which is btw. soo boring to do.. :o

[El Burritoh]

Direct seams control will be coming along in the future versions. What do you think about seams setup via poly-groups? Would it work? Or is there a better way for the artists to define them inside ZBrush?
I was thinking about that, actually. Of course, I'm a pretty novice user compared to some of the artists around here, but I suspect polygroups would be a good place to start, since that at least gives control to the user in a way that is already familiar to them. The challenge after that would still be in controlling where to place the actual seem. For example, if an arm is "ProUV-ed" according to its polygroup, will the seem run along the bottom of the arm starting at the armpit? The program doesn't even know it's an arm! Certainly a edge-selection method would help, but then it's no longer an automatic task.

Maybe there can be an option to "offset" the seem by a percentage, 0% and 100% being essentially the same placement. Using a slider for that percentage would then dynamically move the seem "around" on the mesh. But then... you'd need a way of displaying the seem dynamically so we could see where it was.

On the other hand, one could argue that since texture-painting still relies so much on tools like PS, manually defining UV seems must remain part of the workflow.

I dunno. We all want to skip the UVing process entirely, of course. But it's just a nature-of-the-beast kind of thing right now. I like where the ProUV plug-in is going, and I'll be watching it closely.

[speedym]

What do you think about simply forcing seams to be on the places where two polygroups meet, and where no polygroup is defined at all means the seam is not allowed?

For example if you want armpit to hand seam, you select two polygon stripes on the bottom of the arm so they touch eachother, put them each in a separate polygroup, and it's done. Where they touch, the seam is generated.

[El Burritoh]

What do you think about simply forcing seams to be on the places where two polygroups meet, and where no polygroup is defined at all means the seam is not allowed?

For example if you want armpit to hand seam, you select two polygon stripes on the bottom of the arm so they touch eachother, put them each in a separate polygroup, and it's done. Where they touch, the seam is generated.Sounds like a possibility, but it might interfere with existing polygroups, which are handy for selection purposes. Still, an option.

[spiraloid]

very nice!

it would be great if you could recognize that the models with symmetrical topology or similiar topologies repeated, that way you could copy and paste textures meaningfully in 2d. i.e. paint have a body and mirror the paint easily.

[speedym]

Just to let all interested people know, the open beta has been extended until 17.06.2009 - please download and install the latest Beta 3 release.

I'm still working on the licensing system.. hopefully the official 1.0 release will be out in the following days.

Beta 3 change-log can be found here (http://speedy.rs/support/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7).

[Francis Bezooyen]

Thoughts regarding enabling the user to define seam locations:

The Problem:

The purpose of providing user control over seam locations with this plugin would presumably be to address the fact that algorithmic seam selections are likely to be less ideal than user selections. The trick is in providing sufficient control to the user without loosing the "automatic" component/advantage of the tool.


A possible solution:

First - in my view, no uv solution would be complete without providing the user the option of 100% manual control over every uv of the uv layout, in a way that enables the user to powerfully mix manual and automatic solutions in ways that compliment each other, and to whatever extent the user feels necessary. It is very likely that such control will be preferred or even required at one point or another in any given production.

Having said that - a happy medium might be found in leveraging Zbrush's painting abilitities. You could set up a workflow that would allow the user to indicate the start, end, direction and even mid-way guides for a seam via short paint strokes.

To illustrate:

If I were cutting the seam that separates an arm from the body - I could press a hotkey that indicates that the I'm about to mark the beginning of a cut, which I do by placing a simple dot with the paint brush. Next, I hold another hotkey to indicate that I'm about to mark the direction of the seam, which I describe by placing a stroke over a short distance, that over its length indicates the vector/direction of the loop. Then, I use a similar procedure to indicate the end of the cut, if I want it to end anywhere except the seam start position. Finally, I hit the unwrap button, and have the unwrap algorithm place cuts wherever I indicated, and additional cuts wherever it deems necessary (unless I mark a checkbox indicating that it should only make seams where I indicate). Color-coded marks, and other features that compliment and enhance this approach would also be nice.

Anyway, there's one idea.

[Disco Stu]

Yeah Francis that would be a solution but i guess it will be impossible
for one person to script all that into zbrush.
Also i think you will have a hard time publishing this as a plugin
that costs. So far i have seen no zplugin that had a price.

Also you have to keep in mind that z4 is infront of the door and all this
will most likely not work within it.
Not to speak of the possible new uv tools in z4.
Im guessing they came to similar ideas like the one Francis wrote here.

The main problem of this automatic unwrap is the seams and orientation
of the uv tiles. Sure with polypaint this works rather well but polypainting
is no industry standard. Photoshop on the other hand is. Now with a seam
over a visible section it will become a nightmare to paint seamless.

[speedym]

@Francis: Great idea! I'm actually thinking of doing something like that for the next version. :)

@Disco Stu: ProUV plug-in will have a price, but it will be quite reasonable, somewhere between 50-100 EU. And it will be ported to ZB4, when it gets released.

[speedym]

Yey, open beta has finished! I have to thank all the people from the forums for useful and helpful feedback.

The plug-in is currently available at 20% introductory sales discount, until 01.07.2009.

Press release can be found here (http://speedy.rs/prouv/index.php/component/content/article/3-newsflash/4-v10pressrelease).

:cool:

ps. This is the _first_ independent commercial plug-in for ZBrush, right?

[Clappy71]

The plugin looks promising, but at 55 euros, I doubt your going sell much until you provide control over seam placement. Just my two cents.

Cheers,
Matt

[ChrRambow]

I think an unwrap option in zbrush is a fine idea but without better control over uv layout it's not a good option.

Because you can easy export your lowpoly mesh from zbrush and unwrap in your major 3d app. I do this in BP3d then i import the lowres mesh back to replace the uv layout on the already sculpted zbrush model. It's just a matter of a few clicks.

[speedym]

The point of this plug-in is that you don't need to unwrap manually for most of the models, because the seams are minimized. It should basically save you time, because it does its work in one mouse-click.

For the models which would benefit from manual seam placement - I do intend to incorporate that feature in the next version. :cool:

Did you actually compare render outputs between ProUV and your manual work?

[ChrRambow]

When using object normalmaps your plugin is the choice for shure but with tangential normalmaps i prefere manual unwrapping which is very fast in bodypaint... select projcetion and seams then one click unwrap.

maybe you could take a look into bp for unwrapping with setting seams for a later version.

Keep up the great work the community need guys that develop such great plugins.

[abe_Tamazir]

same here, will be more interesting when teh seem selection will be available....
right now, fo rthe price, i'd rather Uv in maya or other progs...
will keep my eyes on this :)
Great work though, defo something we need (not many Uvtools that are quick and easy to use out there)

[hobo]

I think you should look at your forum once in a while :)

nice looking plugin though, well done !!

[Richard Marklew]

I think you should look at your forum once in a while :)

nice looking plugin though, well done !!

I agree about their forums. If their technical support forums are mostly spam messages, what does that tell you about the importance they put on customer support, unless you have warts or a liver condition.

Richard

[Disco Stu]

Well at least he recognized that there is no market for the plugin and moved on to something else.
I guess there wont be any angry customers:)

[moogal]

At least? It looked to me to be pretty useful, and I'd considered buying it.

[Disco Stu]

Well im not saying that its all bad.
But someone who needs uvs on their model whatsoever needs to know how
to uv map properly. Its pretty easy once u got the hang of it.
It can even become fun.
For characters that is.... not for tanks ^^

[Disco Stu]

Also the forums got cleaned up by now so i guess theres nothing in the
way of you purchasing it.

[jaystein777]

Well, to be blunt the fact that this plugin has to be purchased is an insult to the ZB community. I would use it if it were a free plugin like %99 percent of the other plugins around here. Otherwise I'll stick to doing my UV's manually which is the only way to do anyway.

[Svengali]

Insult? Who? Why?

Sven

[jaystein777]

Ok, maybe I was being a bit harsh, sorry for that, but my feelings about this plugin remain unchanged. Kudos for the hard work, I personally could not make a plugin, but I have worked on MEL scripts, and yes while making plugins is hard work, charging for an unsupported plugin has always proved disastrous, mainly because usually the money ends up being wasted because of constant program version incompatibilities.

[Phalogore]

Congrats for the plugin, seems to work ok, I'v been unwraping manualy models for years and thats the olny way I do it, and all the plugings that come out (for MAX in my case) are useless for profesional work, Its all ways better to do stuff manually to get better control of you'r, or you'r pipelines work, but for Zbrush I think its great idea to do stuff automatic for new or lazy people who dont want to get involved in manualy unwrapping a model. I really dont expect you to make a controlable unwrapping solution like unwrellla (witch really sucks) for ZB. Just keep it simple for people who just want to sculpt, export, retouch and render in other applications...
Its a really cool alternative to thouse lame ass auv`s and guv`s.
Again, Congratulations, I know there`s a lot of work involved in this.
and I know my english sucks.

Bests Regards from Phalogore3D : Richard McDaniel :tu:

[speedym]

The plug-in is supported, we just had a spam-bot flood on our support forums, which is now fixed, hopefully, for good. :S

Currently, the port to ZBrush 3.5 is underway.

Cheers guys, and thanks for the feedback! :)

[Erklaerbar]

Could be useful, however 2 notes which are subjective of course:

internet connection required: software that tries to connect to internet is a pain, but software that requires internet to work is useless. Got kicked from my PC before i even tried it.

price: way too high. Would be willing to pay 20, maximally 30 bucks for it.

Good luck!
E.

[Alamaraminu]

The point of this plug-in is that you don't need to unwrap manually for most of the models, because the seams are minimized. It should basically save you


Regards










hamac jardin (http://www.abcmaison.com/33) - virus trojan (http://www.antivirusexpress.com/virus-trojan.asp)

[speedym]

I'm glad to announce ProUV 1.1 for ZBrush has been released. Main features of this version are:

* support for Windows 7
* support for ZBrush 3.5 R2

For all existing customers, the upgrade is free of charge.

Cheers! :)

[speedym]

Could be useful, however 2 notes which are subjective of course:

internet connection required: software that tries to connect to internet is a pain, but software that requires internet to work is useless. Got kicked from my PC before i even tried it.

price: way too high. Would be willing to pay 20, maximally 30 bucks for it.

Good luck!
E.First of all, thanks for the feedback!

I'm not sure which version did you use - official 1.0 and 1.1 do not require internet connection to work. The first 1.0 beta version without licensing system did require it and it had a simple "internet network time protocol" check for beta expiry, which was quite clearly stated on the ProUV web site.

About the price, when compared with the prices of other 3d plug-ins on the market, it's actually not high at all.

Milan Bulat,
ProUV Team

[Erklaerbar]

Good to see there is an update to 3.5 R2. Faster than Pixologic itself:tu:

Best,
E.

[speedym]

I'm glad to announce ProUV 1.2 for ZBrush has been released. Main feature of this version is support for ZBrush 3.5 R3.

For all existing customers, the upgrade is free of charge.

Cheers! :)

[Richard Marklew]

Good to see there is an update to 3.5 R2. Faster than Pixologic itself:tu:

Best,
E.
At least pixologic have got a version that works on a mac.

Richard

[speedym]

Richard, I guess you need a Mac version of this plug-in? :)

[Richard Marklew]

Am I likely to see one available ?

Richard

[speedym]

Perhaps I could make you a standalone version which processes exported .obj files if you have a windows emulator (ie. parallels)? That would be much easier then doing the full Mac port, if it works for you?