UDIM Packing Toolbox for Maya

[@ToxicSkyline00]

This tool literally blow my mind! I just started working with UDIMs and Maya's tools are horrible. I knew there had to be a better way and you sir have answered that call!

[@malcolm341]

Thanks a lot, yeah the Maya tool is pretty unusable I couldn't work with it either.

[@quietlyworking]

A looooooong time ago in a Maya version far, far away... you became my most prized and appreciated tool set and dev. You are in a class where the air is truly thin my spectacular friend.

[@malcolm341]

Thanks I'm glad you enjoyed this update, more to come.

[@frumpeting]

Great tool! This alone is worth the cost of the entire script pack! Thanks Malcolm.

[@malcolm341]

Good to know it's useful, thanks.

[@boycie18]

This is without doubt one of the best tools I've seen. Honestly this is going to make my life so much easier!!!! THANKYOU I'm going to ask the company I work for to employ this into their pipe...

[@malcolm341]

Oh cool, thanks a lot for letting me. I hope your company approves the purchase for you to use it at work.

[@1Robertwaterworth]

Amazing! Now I can work with UDIMS in Maya without pulling my hair out. Until now, editing UDIMS was driving me crazy. I can't understand why Maya made it so frustrating and difficult to do basic UDIM shell editing. I've been waiting for a tool like this to come along. I know I've said that before about your script pack LOL I'm starting to sound like a real fanboy LOL but credit where credit is due, you really are writing tools that solve real problems in Maya. Your work is amazing Malcolm! I appreciate it

[@malcolm341]

Thanks Robert, I had remembered you were asking about UDIMs a while back, but I hadn't worked with them until recently so I didn't realize the tools were so lacking. Now we have something we can both use.

[@OmarHesham]

Amazing script and great breakdown! Really cant imagine doing UDIM UVs moving forward without this! Hands down the fastest and easiest way. Thank you!

[@malcolm341]

Thanks for your help developing this tool Omar, UDIMs were a mystery to me before we worked on this.

[@OmarHesham]

@@malcolm341 No problem! Happy to help however I can. Your scripts are amazing and you are always adding community suggestions so frequently. This tool came out so good!

[@erichance8222]

Wow, another great update! Good stuff Malcolm.

[@malcolm341]

Thanks, enjoy the update.

[@boofrisco]

Great work as usual. I'm so glad I bought the script mega pack!

[@malcolm341]

That's awesome, I'm glad you're enjoying the tools.

[@spyrosF2011]

Awesome tool for simplifiying the UDIM layouts! Thank you so much for your hard work and all the really helpful tools.

[@malcolm341]

Thanks, I'm glad you found this useful.

[@borantube]

Amazing tools malcolm! As someone who works in vfx industry this is going to help a lot!

[@malcolm341]

That's great, thanks for providing your feedback that it will be useful.

[@Rajuuken]

Super scripts you continue to improve and I like it ! It seems totally usable with just 1 tile as well. I start to like when you say : '' super annoying !'' . You are so true about these ! I would just add that using arrows of the keyboard to move the shells from one tile to another is always usefull.

[@malcolm341]

Thanks, I like to use the arrow hotkeys to move shells one tile as well, but not everyone works that way. Make sure to check out update 1 I've already added new features to this tool and you're right even for one tile this tool can save a lot of time kzbin.info/www/bejne/m6nVe4GdltaVaJI

[@lockenessmotorsports818]

This is fantastic you always come through

[@malcolm341]

Thanks, glad it's useful.

[@stephenhibberd4309]

Awesome, thanks so much for making all these great tools. There is one annoying aspect of the UV Editor and that's when you open it, the UV Toolkit is always separate from it and i always having to combine the 2 panels. So the less I need to use the better! Cheers.

[@malcolm341]

Thanks, my goal with these tools is to eliminate the UV toolkit and find it cumbersome to use and the UI is too big.

[@omma911]

Holy shit! Orient shells is some witchcraft. 😲

[@malcolm341]

Yeah it's really handy, just a built in part of Maya that wasn't exposed very well now it's easy to use.

[@alexdik17]

Hello! I purchased this plugin yesterday and I want to say that it's very convenient and useful. However, I still need some of the advanced functionality of Maya to create proper packaging. Maybe I missed something, and you can advise me on what to do. So, when I have many identical shells, but half of them need to be larger and half smaller (with the same shape and geometry), how can I automatically arrange the shells so they don't overlap in shape? In other words, I want the arrangement to be as it was packed on UVs. It would also be useful to have a feature where I can set padding and manually move the shells, and the shells would have a "padding aura" around half of the set padding. This way, even with stacked shells, I can move them manually so the program doesn't merge them into one or separate them if they were initially together. Perhaps in future versions of your plugin, you will find a solution to this (if it doesn't already exist, and I'm just not aware). In any case, thank you for your efforts and for such a high-quality and useful product.

[@malcolm341]

@alexdik17 Hi, thanks for your purchase. See answers below: 1. To keep identical shells from stacking during layout turn off the stack checkbox and every shell will pack with out stacking or overlap. Unless you're asking for a way to group some shells together and pack those as individual stacked groups. If so I actually have that feature working in another tool, I wasn't sure it was useful for UDIM though because I was told with UDIM for film stacking is uncommon and is more of a games workflow. You can see a .gif demo of it here, this tool only works in 0-1 UV space though so it won't work for UDIMS at the moment, what you could do is pack your shells using this tool and then in the udimPacker tool turn off the auto pack checkbox and send those selected sells to the UDIM tile you want. Let me know if this is what you're looking for, I haven't tried porting it to the UDIM toolbox yet so I'm not sure if it would even work. www.linkedin.com/posts/malcolm-andrieshyn-10135959_maya3d-autodeskmaya-plugins-activity-7105391268435804160-USI5? 2. I don't think I understand this question, "It would also be useful to have a feature where I can set padding and manually move the shells." There is no way in Maya that I know of to pack shells around existing shells, I've tried for many years to figure this out, but there doesn't appear to be any commands in Maya to pack around things. The only place I've seen this working is Blender plugin UVPack Master, and Rizom UV. I'm not totally sure I understand what you're asking for, but give the pack selected to pivot button a try, it respects padding and arranges the selected shells into their own pack, and you can thin them out with the layout up and layout right buttons. Video here at time stamp kzbin.info/www/bejne/f6GmanyvlN2NqqM

[@alexdik17]

1. I think this is exactly what I had in mind. Thank you, and yes, I do work in the gaming industry. 2. Let me try again: I mean a feature that would create an aura around the shell. For example, if you set the padding to 8 pixels, the aura around each shell would be 4 pixels, allowing you to manually move the shells while ensuring that space is used most efficiently and the padding isn't violated. Perhaps this could involve a mechanism for creating temporary "edge extruding" around each shell. I hope I've explained it more clearly. Best regards,@@malcolm341

[@theapexpredator157]

Is it possible to stack similar shells? Also, can you arrange the shells from largest to smallest? Liked and Subscribed.

[@malcolm341]

@theapexpredator157 Stacking was added after this video was made. Demo .gif here www.linkedin.com/posts/malcolm-andrieshyn-10135959_maya3d-autodeskmaya-plugins-activity-7047312096589447169-_7YI? Largest to smallest can be done in default Maya using the Layout Along feature found in the UV Editor Modify menu. In my tool I have something similar which you might find useful which is layout up and layout right demo here kzbin.info/www/bejne/f6GmanyvlN2NqqM

[@MrAsag]

wou! amazing tools! why autodesk don't implement so useful features by themselves..?

[@malcolm341]

Thanks, glad you like it.

[@pc-bh2in]

Hello Malcolm, I recently purchased your megapack and is starting to go through each of your tools now. However I was just wondering does any of your modeling script happens to clean imported model such as fix non-manifold, lamina, remove extra diagonal edges, etc. If so, can you please let me know which of your scripts I should be looking under? Because I don't think I can find one that does that. But I just wanted to ask you in case it's hidden somewhere. Thanks for writing these time-saving scripts. I especially like the mirror and rebuild script, they're amazing!

[@malcolm341]

I'm glad you're enjoying the tools, I don't have anything for mesh cleaning at this time. What don't you like about the default clean up tool in Maya it has all the features you asked for, but that doesn't mean it's nice to use.

[@pc-bh2in]

@malcolm341 The Maya cleanup tool is what I'm using at the moment to clean up my mesh. Like you said, it's not that nice to use which I agree. That's why I like alot of your tools as they're simple, compact, and with good combos. I was merely curious if you have something like that to clean meshes. Thanks for your response Malcolm. I look forward to your new future tools.

[@malcolm341]

@@pc-bh2in Great thanks for the feedback, the thing I really don't like about the clean up tool is that you can't keep it open and use other tools it's clunky for sure. In the future I might just create one of my own toolbox with all the same tools and anything else that's useful.

[@pc-bh2in]

@@malcolm341 That's good to hear. Just some thoughts... maybe it'll become an extension to your "Obj Import Export Toolbox" or just another tool on its own. I basically was thinking a toolbox for cleaning imported meshes. The tool might include frequent native maya tools as well all packed in one such as Remesh, Retopologize, Quadrangulate, etc. By the way, I'm just throwing ideas out there, don't feel compelled to take them. Thanks again Malcolm.

[@hotsauce7124]

Do UDIMs have to be consecutive numbers? For example, does Maya allow for gaps in the naming convention numbers? Is it ok to have UDIM 1001, 1002, 1003 and then skip to 1011?

[@malcolm341]

It will work fine for texturing as far as I know with gaps, I think general practice in film is to group similar material properties together into tiles so all the metal goes into 1001-1003, then all the wood 1004-1005, rubber 1006-1008 etc. I'm not super familiar with UDIM rules of thumb though as I've spent my whole career in games. For characters I think they start with the head and go down from there head 1001, body 1002, shoes 1003 etc.

[@hotsauce7124]

@@malcolm341 Thank you, Sir

[@MiMicheIIe]

One major issue I have with Maya's "one-click" UV layout tool is that while it keeps texel size consistent if you use one UV tile, it completely breaks when you use 2 or more. If I understand correctly, this *can* do that properly, right? Or does that still involve some manual tweaking and adjustment? Tool does look very useful!

[@malcolm341]

Yes correct, this tool maintains the texel density you set on all tiles when sending shells to tiles using send to UDIM# and send to NEXT #. If you send too many shells to a single tile it will overflow rather than chaing the texel density of those shells.

[@TheFiftyGangsta]

Hello; Great Tool. Just One question: Is there a way to send the UV's to the negative UDIM Tiles?

[@malcolm341]

No, unfortunately the tool only works with positive tiles. When I was developing the tool I worked with a character/prop artist from the film industry and he said for film the tiles should always be 1001+. As a workaround if you only need to send a couple tiles to negative you can send them to positive and then use the up/down/left/right buttons to move them by one tile with each press of the button.

[@TheFiftyGangsta]

@@malcolm341 Thank U for the answer. I got my Problem solved by Just increasing the grid tiles in the Grid settings. I was running Out of space and didnt Know U could Just increase Them. Nevertheless thank U for the tip at the end and have a good day!

[@malcolm341]

@@TheFiftyGangsta Great, glad it's working for you now.

[@allenwickey78]

Man, THANK YOU!! You are a life saver!

[@malcolm341]

Great, glad you're enjoying the tool. Make sure to check out the the second video too kzbin.info/www/bejne/m6nVe4GdltaVaJI

[@Laser77Show]

That's cool tool!

[@malcolm341]

Thanks a lot, check out part 2 kzbin.info/www/bejne/m6nVe4GdltaVaJI

[@だえん-h5i]

Great tool. Now I am helped by this tool. Can I download the ArrowTexture that came out on the way somewhere?

[@malcolm341]

Thanks, here's a link to the arrow texture drive.google.com/file/d/1lLuyoWYKDEyOG3SqX8gJrzayNRrbSY9U/view?usp=sharing

[@だえん-h5i]

@@malcolm341 thank you. I look forward to your video in the future.

[@malcolm341]

@@だえん-h5i awesome, more to come.

[@AjitTevar]

sir whenever m clicking on "pack selected get TD" messgae coming is " Mesh has unconnected uvs " what this mean? plz help

[@malcolm341]

I've never seen that message before, can you send me your mesh so I can have a look [e-mail]

[@AjitTevar]

@@malcolm341 sure sir !

[@AjitTevar]

sir check your mail !

[@hotsauce7124]

If I have a geo that has a ton of little shells, is there a way to have all the UV's auto fill "all" available Udims like the World Space to Next does?

[@malcolm341]

Yes, but the process is pretty slow. Select all the shells and turn on select pack overflow checkbox and auto pack shells checkbox then click the send shells to next and it will select the things that don't fit so just keep clicking send to next and it will fill up each tile with what fits.

[@hotsauce7124]

@@malcolm341 How can I send you and FBX of the model?

[@malcolm341]

@@hotsauce7124 [e-mail]

[@hotsauce7124]

@@malcolm341 Email sent, thank you.

[@hotsauce7124]

If the UV's align along the X and Y axis, just select the UV shells again, rotate the UV's, then hit the "Send Shells to UDIM #" button. It will pack the UDIM properly.

[@WilliamFurneaux]

So good! Thank you for this update!

[@malcolm341]

Hey you're welcome it's great you find this useful.

[@JM-dr1th]

Also if you haven't tried already I reccomend trying RizomUV for feature ideas with your UV plugins. I love Rizoms selection tool with a live preview of the optimal edge when holding shift, the vertical and horisontal edge constrains when unfolding are incredibly useful too. Also the gridify uses the existing seams. I love your scripts and look forward to seeing what you come up with in future

[@malcolm341]

I think in default Maya you can freeze the UVs and then unfold and those UVs will stay locked to get any type of constraint you need.

[@JM-dr1th]

@@malcolm341 You can however in Rizom with the constrains it still unfolds as best it can while conforming to the constraints you have given. In maya you'd have to unfold, straighten, then freeze the UV's if the straighten hadn't already broken the UV's. It's tricky to explain unless you have tried the constraints in Rizom. In this video he uses just the horisontal constraint at 70 sec mark kzbin.info/www/bejne/eqfRkqFpls2Xd9U

[@malcolm341]

@@JM-dr1th I see, it straightens the edges for you first, then freezes, then unfolds, Maya can do that, but you can only choose one edge first using unfold UVs with an edge selected instead of UVs. This would technically not be that hard to create in Maya, but the limitation would be it would only work on edges that were continuous horizontally/vertically like in your example and it wouldn't work on manual or partial edge selections with my current coding knowledge. It would need to expand out horizontally the edge until it hits the border and then run the script on that which should work, not too sure how useful that would be. For gridify working on existing shells I'm assuming you want recUV not gridUV. I have a limitation of my script in recUV needing 4 corners currently, I've actually adapted that script to work on existing shells for Omar, but your shell still needs to form a rectangle or square just like the regular script, no stair steps or jaggies. I didn't release it because I felt I'd get too many complaint e-mails when it didn't work on "all" shell shapes. So Omar is the only guy with that tool at the moment. Technically the way I do it is a lot faster than Rizom because your faces don't need UVs. What is your motivation to first UV map the faces, and then gridify them, why not just select the faces and have it done in one click with the recUV tool?

[@JM-dr1th]

​@@malcolm341 Sometimes I have made cuts right at the beginning and do a general unfold and for areas like arms for example I'd go back and rectangulate. I think your rect UV script is actually fine thinking about it, it's just my workflow involves doing things twice sometimes. So maybe adding a use existing seams button into the existing script may be a nice addition. As for the constraints in rizom it does work for partial selections and as mentioned before once the contraints have been added it is still unfolding which I don't think would happen with what you mentioned. I think with your current tools plus maya being already pretty solid with UV's it beats doing it in most software besides Rizom. At the start of that video he also does some topocopy thing which looks a lot like transfer attributes but it seems to detect other objects with the same topology without having to go in and select them which is pretty near too. Anyways I'm really happy with what you have created regardless. It's really just the constraints and the shift selection tool that I miss from Rizom which is similar-ish to maya's select shortest edge path tool, but it's providing a live preview before making the click (accepting it)

[@malcolm341]

@@JM-dr1th For rectangularize existing shell did you want it to unfold the shell first, or just straighten what's already there? If you select the faces in the UV editor and just run the tool it should work, that's technically the same as using it on an existing shell, it just works on faces instead of UVs so maybe you already have what you want, or is it because the shell moves and changes scale that it's not working for you. Live selection highlighting does not appear to be exposed in mel script so where out luck on that one. To make the horizontal constraint work with an arbitrary selection I'll need to figure out how to select each edge loop individual in the code, I've been thinking about this problem for a couple years and haven't found a solution yet because Maya doesn't have a concept of an edge loop, just individual edges. If I ever find a solution to that problem then the constraint thing becomes pretty easy. I'll take another look into figuring out the edge loop selection, but the solution has escaped me so far.

[@hotsauce7124]

My UDIMs are running straight up for some reason. I cannot seem to rest the tool so the UDIMS fille UDIM# 1002. The Rest button does not resolve the issue. Any advice?

[@malcolm341]

I'm not sure what you mean, what is the rest button? To get UVs to go to a certain tile type the tile number into the UDIM# field or use the +/- buttons, select the shells and press the send shells to UDIM# Or if you want to do it slower, but have it be automatic turn on select pack overflow and use the send shells to next UDIM# button until all the shells are into their own UDIM tiles. If you still need help feel free to send me a screenshot here [e-mail]

[@hotsauce7124]

@@malcolm341 Hello, When I would hit the "Send shells to next #" the Udims would go to UDIM1002 then start tiling straight up into infinity. I fixed this by deleting my preferences and re-loading the shelf.

[@hotsauce7124]

I must have done something wacky to cause this problem. Its all on me. Deleting the preferences fixed the issue.

[@malcolm341]

@@hotsauce7124 That's strange I haven't seen that issue yet, let me know if it happens again or if you have steps to recreate the problem.

[@hotsauce7124]

@@malcolm341 Hello, it happened again. I have a single geo with a ton of little uv shells. I press "Send Shells to Udim #" Then when I see the highlighted UV shells that are outside the Udim, I press "Send Shells to Next." It arranges the uv's in a straight line straight up Y axis and this time in a straight line along X axis. It made a really long "L" shape. Deleting the preferences did not fix the issue. It does not happen when I have lets say 30 UV shells. But If I have over lets say 100 tiny UV shells, they arrange in straight lines along the X and Y axis.

[@dubtube6691]

omg, your are a genius 😱 this is brilliant 😍

[@malcolm341]

Oh cool, I'm glad you think this will be useful.

[@dubtube6691]

@@malcolm341 absolutely, I use substance painter and we need urine, with Maya only it's a pain

[@malcolm341]

@@dubtube6691 Awesome, I just started learning UDIM and I wasn't happy with the workflow so I started writing the tool.

[@msb7583]

amazing!!

[@malcolm341]

Thanks, check out the updates in the second video kzbin.info/www/bejne/m6nVe4GdltaVaJI

[@srod8509]

Does this tool work with Maya 2020 and 2023

[@malcolm341]

Yes works with both.

[@TheBrotMaster]

Hey Malcom, your Tools are amazing! Is there any way to make them payable with PayPal again?

[@malcolm341]

Sorry for the very late reply, I believe if you buy them on Artstation they accept PayPal.

[@red4666]

I have to take a film asset that has a whole bunch of uv tiles (UDIMs) and textures and place it into unreal. There's just too many. Is there a tool/plugin where I can automate shrinking the UVs and combining the appropriate maps into smaller chunks?

[@malcolm341]

You'll need to be more specific, the default Maya layout tool can take all UVs and pack them into 0-1 for games, but it sounds like you want something more complex. You can also use UDIMs directly inside Unreal if you want kzbin.info/www/bejne/fpm3aqJ7d5yrodU

[@lavivaneau0]

Please transfer some of those tools to the UV Mapper tool box :) They would be so useful!

[@malcolm341]

That is the plan coming soon.

[@rahulrichard912]

awesome!!🤯

[@malcolm341]

Thanks.

[@jas4animation]

This is awesome

[@malcolm341]

Thanks, for commenting.

[@animhaxx]

Can't buy it right now😭. But I will definitely buy it in the future

[@malcolm341]

Great to hear, thanks for your feedback.