Cerbera

It definitely is there ! However, I think it is broken at the moment, at least with selections, so maybe download the one from this thread that @Havealotkindly provided the other day. CBR

I suspect you will need to collapse or convert that hair down to polys in Maya before exporting it in order for Cinema to be able to read its info and assign UVs. But not 100% on that, so happy to defer to anyone jumping in who knows better... however, as the alembic capabilities change fairly often within Cinema you should at least tell us which version you are working in, and that info should definitely be in your profile please too, 31 posts in as we are... CBR

Yep, came here to suggest what HP had already beat me to saying 🙂 CBR

All images that are not in the Color / Diffuse channel should be RAW, generally speaking. CBR

Reading down your comprehensive list above, I am struck by why I never seem to encounter these issues in hours and hours of my own unwrapping, and I think we are using different methods ! The 'rules' I follow are thusly: 1. Only do automatic unwrap on sections of mesh clearly made for it. 2. Define poly selections, and project those frontally from all the best angles, then use 4, 5 and 6 keys to put those and align them where I want them. 3. Optionally Pin and Relax those meshes, optionally using cuts I have saved to a selection tag 4. Activate UV options to show Distortion (100%) and Island Connectivity (now I can see what connects where) 5. Use 'weld and relax' mainly in poly mode (instead of weld, on the whole) or manual UV point terracing to combine islands if necessary (and I tend to move the islands adjacent to where I want them to end up before doing this). 6. Further relaxment if I went the manual terrace route. 7. UV Packing. You will detect something of the 'legacy' in my workflow, and that is true - I liked the 'old' way of unwrapping stuff, and that continues to work for me very nicely in Cinema, enhanced as it is by the new layout and UV mode details. Occasionally I find that approach isn't optimal or takes a bit long for really organic stuff, so only then do I head over to the newer cut and unwrap tools like the Ministry of flat-based UV Unwrap etc. And because I don't use that much I guess that may be why your specific issues are new to me ! 🙂 You are right that in my example above the red areas are less than ideal (and that is the best Cinema's relax routines can manage using workflow above), but the Magnet (UV) and brush relax (modelling) tools are there to sort out situations like that, where it is important using the old workflow. If you have connectivity turned on you usually can see what will weld where. The UV Weld tool does not move islands first, and I believe that is intended. If you want to move islands at the same time, use weld and relax instead. The help is very illuminating about precisely how that works, but in trying it myself I have found a few bugs and moments of unexpected behaviour... I can't answer your questions on texel density or UDIMs alas (though fairly sure Maxon is aware of and working on those) - as a mainly modeller I have so far considered those 'none of my business' , and there are people much better qualified than me to comment on those aspects. CBR

I will answer this one quickly - no you are not 😉 In the move tool (attributes, UV edit) there is that little box 'keep neighbour components' and it is this which governs whether polys get torn off or not when you select and move them in the UV layout... CBR

Excellent - that's exactly the level of thoroughness of feedback we need and appreciate ! I will go through this in some detail once I have finished today's modellings... CBR

Coming back to this post because I have been UVing all day yesterday and generally, have been having a lovely time of it and enjoying the UV Edit layout ! And it's been unwrapping my golf clubs very nicely indeed, with colors showing me what little distortion remains, and island connectivity - I'd say that was nice enough to take home to mum ! That is not to say we can't find things to improve about it, but as usable layouts go I reckon we're doin' OK after the re-vamp... What is it you don't like, @Jeff H1, apart from the zoom limit thing, and what do you feel we are still lacking ? CBR

An alternative to that might be to animate the offset of a stripey material in the emission / luminance channel if you would rather do it without physical model animation. CBR

Yes the UV panel does have a fixed zoom limit, which I find occasionally annoying. Not sure I have noticed anything going blinky though...

Please pop that in your profile so we never have to ask again ! 😉 CBR

Yes, I have to agree that Maxon development and release rate and feature quality has been much improved in the last years, and even though I am against subscription models on the whole, I have to admit Maxon are fully justifying that model in terms of regularity of updates, and how many genuinely usable new features are getting added. I have been delighted with how many tools that I have requested are now in the software - its modelling toolset is pretty formidable now, and long may that continue, in the short time before AI is doing it all for us and modelling becomes lost knowledge 🙂 CBR

I concur - I cannot get that to acknowledge a user made selection tag in any version after 25 to latest 2023.1.2. I don't think it is working for you in R26 - it isn't for me ! 🙂 I have reported it for you, and hopefully they will address it soon. CBR

Hey Tomas - welcome to the Core ! 🙂 The Wind deformer is rather unique among deformers in that it doesn't have much in the way of visual feedback, so it can be tricky to see which way up it is unless it is assigned to a flat plane, where it is a lot easier to see the direction of movement than it would be were it applied initially to something round or solid ! Start a new scene, so that you can understand how it works. Add a plane object with default 10 x 10 segments but make it +Z. Now add a Wind Deformer to the scene, which by default is 'waving' down the X axis, which would be 'along' your Z facing plane, and therefore correct orientation, so if you drag the wind under the plane and give it some strength (amplitude) you should see the plane move properly. If you are using flag mode, then you would additionally move the deformer relative to the object, down to one end of it. Once you can visualise how it is working you should be able to align it correctly with the actual object you want to bend. So, once you have selected the wind, use Quantized rotation (hold shift once you start rotating to snap to quantize value) to rotate it exactly 90 degrees from where it is so that its X direction is pointing in the direction you want the wind to move through the object. If you are still stuck, upload the scene file, and we can do it for you. CBR

No no, don't let AI into the system. Have we learned nothing from Terminator 2 ?! 🙂

If files suddenly go missing that is possibly early indication of imminent HDD failure. I would test all system drives. If that seems fine, we gotta think what else could have caused that to go missing, and presumably may have to reinstall to fix it. You should at least mention which version this is... CBR

Save result to file shouldn't be required for this. But we can't test your setup / see if we get the same result without scene and sound file - pls upload. CBR

Yes, when you do CStO on the base mesh that will need placing under SDS again when you have finished your edits. I actually found a slightly less confusing way, so did a quick video that should explain how we'd finish that off... CBR

Ah it's a shame to lose you dude. I's surprised @Igor doesn't want to give you complimentary membership given your usefulness as a coding guy and in the advice department, but equally surprised you consider the subs price too much... it's a relatively paltry amount... Hope to see you around here again when the Blender stuff picks up a bit ! CBR

Awesome. But also Goddammit 🙂 CBR

I don't have anything sub-26 installed any more. But here's how it might work in Standard Render... So Standard Material, and nothing other than a layer shader in the colour channel, which is used like Photoshop in terms of blending modes available and for its masking ability, though that works slightly differently to PS. So, orange base color is applied to whole mesh by being at bottom of layer shader. Vertex map sets top half to 100%, and drives the Mask Layer above that. Above that, we have the green color that it masks. Above that another mask layer, this time driven by another vertex map And the colour above that, the blue is masked accordingly over all the lower layers. And so on and so forth... CBR

You can get round this by 'stacking', which is how people have done it for years. So, multiple texture layers and multiple vertex maps (or noises) to mask them, within a single material. You just keep stacking them up - material blend node into material blend node (RS) or using the Layer shader and it's masks / blending modes in PR/ Standard Materials. And where that isn't flexible enough, as mentioned above, the same approach, but with multiple materials and using alpha channel (opacity / RS) to mask those over the top. CBR

Click on the gray text next to the parameters to turn them yellow. Ctrl-click to add multiples. Now, if you hold control whilst adjusting values, they ALL update. CBR

Dead's a bit harsh I'd say. I still check in every day, and not only because I am moderating ! And I note that most questions do get answered in the end by those of us that remain. It's not up to me of course, but yes, I would like to see something change to get more people in here - just not sure what... CBR

Welcome to the Core ! 🙂 Please start by completing your profile so we know which version you are running, and therefore what tools are available to you. Lordy, that's a complex thing to want to visualise - I can see why there aren't many of those ! 🙂 But I bet Cinema can do something. Not my area of expertise at all, but I will enjoy seeing what others suggest - I presume it'll be something to do with Field forces ?! CBR