Nightshade UV Editor extends the default functionality of Maya's native UV Texture Editor by adding scripts that greatly speed up the time it takes doing UV-related work. The goal is to create the best free UV editor available for Autodesk Maya.
Nightshade UV Editor extends the default functionality of Maya's native UV Texture Editor and comes with the following tools:
-Scale all shells in a selection around their own centerpoints.
-Gather shells: Offsets shells back to the default UV range.
-Straighten UVs: Straightens a UV shell by aligning the edge loops.
-Straighten UV shell: Straightens a shell along an edge loop or ring, and unfolds everything around it.
-UV projection toolset: With all projection types, including a new one: normal-based mapping. Projects against the average face normal.
-Orient UV shells: Orients UV shells so that their bounding box is as small as possible. Almost always results in straight shells.
-Orient edge: Orient UV shell so that the selection runs horizontally or vertically. Great for custom orientation)
-Stack UV shells: Stack UV shells on top of each other.
-Match UV shells: Match UVs to their closest neighbors. Great to use in conjunction with "stack"
-Center UV shells: Places UV shells in the middle at 0.5u 0.5v
-Recreated UV snapshot window for increased user-friendlyness.
-Spread UV shells: Performs a UV shell layout that does not scale your shells or rotate them in a weird way.
-Snap shells: Snap shells to any of the 0->1 boundaries - or to very center (0,5 0,5)
-Snap shells A to B: Snap two shells together by selecting two UV coords.
-Layout U or V-strip
-Randomize UV shells: Randomize translate, rotate and/or scale of each individual UV shell in a selection.
-Normalize UV shells: Standard normalize, Normalize and stretch to boundaries, Normalize to max U or V only.
-Rotate 90/180 degrees: Rotate shells CW or CCW 90/180 degrees.
-Tear off faces: Converts a face selection into a UV shell.
-Quick unfold: Buttons for quickly unfolding along U, V or in both directions with optimal unfold settings.
-Quick relax: Button for quickly relaxing a UV shell with optimal relax settings.
-Advanced UV manipulator: For quickly manipulating UV coords without having to type in new field values like a maniac all the time. In fact, you can do it entirely with just the mouse now - and even store manipulation values in variables for later use.
-Calculate UV utilization: Fast Python script by Guido Neumann that calculates how much space your UV shell scover (0->1 U and V).
-Measure pixel distance: Select two UVs and measure the distance in pixels between them. Excellent when you need to pack your shells tightly but want to avoid having to do a million snapshots.
-Powerful aligner: Aligns UV shells to the right, left, button, top or average U/V
-Push/Move UVs to average U or V: Maya has the tools for pushing UVs to the furthest right/left/bottom/top by default but it does not have the tool for pushing them to the average U or V. Now you have that option.
-Measure UV distance: Measure the U or V distance between two UVs.
-Retain component spacing checkbox: Now you no longer have to go into the Tool Settings window to toggle this.
-Copy, Paste and Delete UV's -buttons
-Integrated UV Set Editor: All the functionality of the default UV Set Editor is integrated. Also comes witha snapshot button.
-Texel density control: For quickly scaling UV shells so that they have the same texel resolution.
-Cycle edge colors: Change color on selected edges by switching back and forth between Maya's preset colors.
Latest version can always be found at Creative Crash: Creativecrash.com
This script is licensed as DONATIONWARE - It's free of charge and may be used for both personal and commercial purposes. I do welcome donations though so if you or your company makes great use out of this then please consider offering a small donation. Thank you.
Hey! Also from Sweden, studying VFX as a 3D artist.
MY biggest problem is getting hang of UV mapping and texturing. This tool looks very promising, cant wait to try it out. Work with maya 2016?