Nightshade UV Editor v2.

1
User manual
Introduction:

Nightshade UV Editor (NSUV) is a tool for Autodesk Maya that aims to greatly speed
up the time it takes to do UV-related work.

Special thanks to:

Nathan Roberts, Robert Kovach, David Johnson and Viktoras Makauskas on CGTalk,
Robert White and Steve Theodore on Tech-Artists.org

Anton Palmqvist, Malcolm Andrieshyn and my friends and former

colleagues Alexander Lilja and Elin Rudn for all the feedback, criticism, bug reports
and feature ideas - Thank you all!

Created by Martin (Nightshade) Dahlin.

http://martin.dahlin.net

Contact:
martin.dahlin@live.com

Terms of use:

For NON-COMMERCIAL use, Nightshade UV Editor (NSUV) is 100% free!

For COMMERCIAL use, a copy of Nightshade UV Editor Pro (NSUV Pro) is required!
NSUV Pro can be purchased at Creative Crash for 30 USD. One person = One copy.
If you are a student or an unemployed artist, you do not have to purchase the pro
version. But if you are a professional you need to get a pro license!

Table of contents:

Installation...............................................................................Page 2
Overview...................................................................................Page 3
Top Bar...............................................................................................Page 4
Side Bar..............................................................................................Page 5-8
Display Bar..........................................................................................Page 9
UV Snapshot.......................................................................................Page 10
Marking Menu.......................................................................................Page 11
 Installation
NOTE that Nightshade UV Editor is only compatible with Autodesk Maya 2013 and
later (32/64 bit - Mac and Windows). Support for Maya 2012 and earlier has been
discontinued and will not be re-implemented. Older versions of NSUV can be handed
out on request though. NSUV for LT is impossible due to its lack of Python support.

1) Unzip the files from the zip file to your Maya user script directory. This directory
is NOT the same as your installation directory. Path to this directory:

Windows: C:\Users\ %USER% \Documents\maya\ %MAYA VERSION% \

Mac: /users/ %USER% /Library/Preferences/Autodesk/maya/ %MAYA VERSION% /

Manually browse to this location!

Make sure you copy everything! (Two folders: prefs and scripts)

2) Start up/Restart Maya and in there write the following in the command line or the
script editor in order to load up NSUV:
import NSUV

Make sure that you enter the command as Python!

NOTE: Do not use the above command for making a shelf button. If you do, NSUV
will only run once!

3) A shelf button can be added to the currently active shelf via the popup window
that appears when NSUV is run for the first time. It can also be added via the
NSUV menu in the top right corner.

4) Please note that files from an older installation of NSUV might interfere with the
functionality of NSUV 2.1 - so make sure that you delete those files from the Maya
user script directory prior to installing.
 OVERVIEW
First: Everything that was in the native UV editor before is still there: but might be
in an unfamiliar place such as the side bar (left) or display bar (bottom).

Second: Some buttons have right mouse button -functionality, and all buttons have
tooltips that appear when you hover the mouse over them. Go ahead and explore.

Third: All the essential UV tools are located on the side bar. All selection features
and move tools are located on the top bar and all UV display related features are on
the display bar at the bottom. All groups can be folded/hidden to free up space.

Fourth: There is an improved marking menu on shift+right click. It is context-

sensitive and requires a UV-selection in order to pop up.

(Overview of Nightshade UV Editor v2.0)

 TOP BAR
The top bar in NSUV contains all the tools needed for moving around UV shells. It
also contains the Unfold3D-brushes introduced in Maya 2016 as well as all the
selection-specific icons. The top bar is divided into separate icon groups. Below is a
rundown of each group.

Move group - The first group contains all the move tools and Unfold3D brushes.
Note that the Unfold3D brushes are new in Maya 2016, and the symmetry tool is
only available in Maya 2016 Ext 2 and later. Older versions of Maya will not include
these tools in NSUV. The icons in this group are:
UV Lattice Tool, Smudge UV Tool, Smear UV Tool, Move UV Shell Tool, Grab UV tool,
Pinch UV Tool, Tweak UV Tool and the Symmetrize UV Tool.

Pinning group - The second group contains all the pinning tools. Note that these are
new in Maya 2016. They are not available in earlier versions of Maya. The icons are:
Pin UV Tool, Pin Selected UVs, Unpin Selected UVs and Unpin All UVs.

Selection group - The third group contains all selection features except the ones for
Isolate Select (placed in the fourth group!). The icons in this group are:
Selected Shortest Edge Path Tool, Convert Selection to Shell, Convert Selection to
Shell Border, Grow Selection, Shrink Selection and finally: Invert Selection. You can
use these selection buttons for any component selection and not just UVs. The last
two buttons can be used to store component selections into variables. Use right
click to save and left click to load. Note that the selection is specific and restricted
to one mesh only!

Isolate Select group - The fourth group contains icons for the Isolate Select feature.
The order of the icons are the following: Toggle Isolate Select, Add Selected UVs,
Remove Selected UVs and finally: Clear all UVs from the isolate select set.

Copy/Paste UV group - The final group contains icons for Copying, Pasting and
Deleting UVs (in that order). Note that you can delete as many UVs as you like, but
the Copy and Paste icons only work on individual UVs. You can of course paste the
coordinates of one UV onto several UVs at once if you like.
 Side BAR
The side bar contains all the essential functionality in NSUV and all the tools and
features are grouped together in a logical order, starting with the manipulator at
the top. Below is a rundown of each group.

The Manipulator - The most important part of NSUV. With the

manipulator you are able to scale, flip, rotate and transform a
UV selection, measure the distance between two UVs (in units
or in pixels) - or the angle between them (arc tangent) - as
well as quickly place the pivot point in either one of the
corners in your selection (based on the bounding box) or in
one of the corners of the default UV range area. Some icons
here have double functionality, such as the Flip UV icon. Left
click will flip a selection along U, while right click flips it along
V. Other icons with double functionality here are the double/
split icon (the 2 symbol), the reset icon to the right of the
input field and the pivot and measure icons. The latter two
have a menu on right-click for changing modes.
For storing values into the A/B/C variables you click the left mouse button, and
you use right-click to read. Unlike the native UV editor in Maya, NSUV only has
one input field. Translation is defined in UV units, Rotations in degrees and Scaling
in fractions. In the manipulator group you also have a checkbox for quickly
toggling on/off the Retain Component Spacing option otherwise located under
Tool Settings.

Project UVs - After the manipulator, groups are ordered in an

order that an artist most likely are going to use them: starting
with Project UVs. Under this group you have all UV projection
features. Note that Contour Stretch Mapping is a new feature
in Maya 2016. Older versions of Maya will not display the icon.

The icons come in the following order: Automatic Mapping, Cylindrical Mapping,
Planar Mapping, Spherical Mapping, Cam-based Mapping, Normal-based Mapping,
Contour Stretch Mapping and finally: Find and Select Unmapped Faces.

For accessing the projection options of each type, use right-click! Also note that
the Planar Mapping icon has a drop-down menu! You have to click and hold the
icon to access each Planar Projection type! Same as you do with the pivot and
measure icons in the manipulator!
 Cut/Sew - The third group contains all the tools needed for
cutting and sewing UV shells. First row: Cut UV Tool, Cut UVs,
Split UVs, Create Shell. On the second row you have: Sew UV
Tool, Sew UVs, Move and Sew UVs and Stitch Together.
Stitch is originally a 3ds Max feature which moves, rotates
AND scales shells before sewing them together!
NOTE: The Cut UV Tool and Sew UV Tool are new additions in Maya 2016. These
will not be available on the UI if you are running an older version!

Unfold - The fourth group on the side bar contains all the tools
needed for unfolding UVs. Order of icons are: Unfold UV Tool,
Unfold UVs, Unfold along U/V only, Smooth UV Tool,
Optimize UV Tool, Optimize UVs (relax), Straighten UV Shell
and Straighten UV Selection.

NOTE: The Unfold UV Tool and the Optimize UV Tool are new additions in Maya
2016. These will not be available on the UI if you are running an older version!
Also, while the Straighten UV Selection is pretty straightforward (it straightens
edge loops!) - the Straighten Shell is a bit more restricted, but equally if not more
powerful! It is restricted in the way how selections needs to be done before you
straighten a shell. Below is an explaination of when and why this tool works - and
when it doesnt!

Case A: Valid UV selection. All UVs are

located on the border, and the selection
is only one one shell.

Case B: Invalid UV selection. We have a

mix of both border UVs as well as
center UVs. Additionally the selection
contains two edge loops.

Case C: Valid edge selection. Only one

loop selected, one shell, and no mix of
center and border edges.

Case D: Invalid selection. Selection

spans multiple shells and contains two
loops. One edge border loop is valid if it
does NOT span over multiple UV shells.
(Overview of valid selections for Straighten Shell)
 Arrange - The fifth group consist almost entirely of a set of
invaluable tool used for arranging UV shells! The first column
here contains tools for orienting shells straight. The top one
is a general-purpose orientation tool. The bottom one - Orient
Edge - will rotate UV shells so that an edge (or two UVs) is
parallell to the U or V axis. Useful if you want more control.

On the second column you have the Layout UVs icon at the top, which comes with
a powerful custom UI exclusive to NSUV. It contains some additional options
compared to the native UI in Maya, but most importantly: its easy to use and
self-explainatory. The icon below - with the big question mark - is Randomize
UVs. It can be used to randomize translation, rotation and scaling of UV shells:
great if you are working on things such as foliage on a tree.

The third column contains the tools Stack UV Shells which does... you guessed
right: Stacks UV shells! The icon below is a tool called Spread Out Shells and
does the contrary. Its based on the Layout UVs functionality and will quickly just
spread out shells - usefull when you have an unordered and messy stack of shells
that you want to clean up.

The fourth column contains a powerful tool called Distribute Shells. With this tool
you are able to distribute a stacked UV shell selection evenly along either the U or
V axis. It has an options window on right-click where you can decide in what
direction a shell stack should be distributed in, and with what spacing. Also
included is a feature for distributing shells towards a target shell.

The last icon in this group is Gather Shells. What it does is gathering all shells
that are outside the default UV range (0 to 1), by offsetting them back into the
default UV range in increments of 1 UV unit. Great to have when you are done
with an Ambient Occlusion or Normal Map -bake.
 Align/Snap - The sixth group contains various tools for align-
ing and snapping UVs or UV shells to each other or the
boundaries of the default UV-range. In the top left corner you
have icons for aligning whole UV shells along U or V. Here you
right click to display the options menu for setting the align-
ment type to either min, mid or max of the U/V distance! In
the top right corner you have the same functionality but for
individual UVs.
In the bottom left corner you have nine icons for snapping a UV shell selection to
the default UV range boundaries, and right next to these you have two icons for
unitizing and normalizing shells - the latter which comes with a custom options UI
on right-click. Normalize UVs is method for scaling a UV shell so that it
covers the UV range boundaries - either to U, V or both axises - with or without
scaling. Normalize Along U/V Only is VERY handy for making things like walls or
roads which have to tile in one direction only. Unitize works in the same way but
will cut all faces in your selection and normalize each one of them. Unitize is most
commonly used for manually creating straight, tilable shells out of things like
ropes, pipes or other tilable cylinders. The general workflow in that case is:
Unitize > Sew shells together > Unfold in one direction.

In the bottom right corner you have two icons for snapping UVs together. Match
UVs is used for matching individual UVs to their neighbors. It doesnt care about
distortion, but will attempt to match UVs to their neighbors based off a tolerance
value instead (which you set via the options window - available on right click).v

UV Set Editor - In NSUV, the UV Set Editor is integrated with

the rest of the UV Editor Window. The icons in this group are:
Create UV Set, Copy UV Set, Duplicate UV Set, Propagate,
UV Set Order Manager, Share Instances, Select Instances and
finally you have UV Snapshot.

In order to copy an entire or partial UV set, click and hold the

Copy UV Set icon. A drop-down menu will appear. Duplicate
UV Set is basicly a quicker version of the Copy -button. It will
instantly create a new UV set based on the selected one.

Propagate UVs is a feature for copying the active UV-set onto multiple meshes. It
works by copying the active UV set to every mesh in your selection - but ONLY if
there is no such set on the target mesh(es). Icon number five contains a tool that
is exclusive to NSUV: The UV Set Order Manager. With this tool you are able to
manually override the UV Set order of the selected mesh, and kill zombie UV sets.
The last button in this group takes you to the NSUV UV Set Snapshot window. The
layout and features of that window is covered later in this manual.

Texel Density - Also exclusive to NSUV is a Texel Density

manager. With this tool you are able to scale UV shells of a
mesh to a fixed TD value. You can also fetch the TD value of
a selection of faces (the value will be based on the map size
field and will be pasted into the top field). Included here are
two icons for storing TD into variables. Use left-click
to READ a value and right-click to WRITE.
 display bar
The display bar at the bottom of the NSUV window contains all the functionality for
toggling various UV display modes. Like the top bar and side bar, it is also grouped.

Group 1 contains the main display icons used for changing the display of the UV
shells and the background. The order of these icons are: Toggle Texture Display,
Toggle Texture Dimming, Toggle Shaded Display, Toggle Shell Borders, Toggle UV
Distortion Display, Cycle Edge Colors, Toggle Checkered Tiles, Toggle Texture
Filtering, Toggle RGB Channel Display, Toggle Alpha Channel Display. Note that the
Distortion Display and Checkered Tiles were added by Autodesk in Maya 2015.

Group 2 contains the display icons related to the grid and snapping. The order and
contents of this group are: Toggle Grid Display, Snap UVs to User-Specified Grid,
Toggle Pixel Snapping.

Group 3 contains the display icons related to PSD networks. The order and contents
of this group are: Toggle UV Texture Editor Baking, Update PSD Networks,
Force Texture Editor Rebake, Toggle Image Ratio.

Group 4 contains the a set of display features that are new in Maya 2016 which are
called View Transform or Color Management. Basicly its a set of gamma and
exposure correction features that can be used to preview textures with gamma and/
or exposure correction in the UV Editor. This group will not be visible if you arent
running Maya 2016 or later. The order and of this group are:
Toggle Exposure, Exposure field value, Toggle Gamma, Gamma field value.
Toggle View Transform, Color Managment Preferences.

Group 5 contains just two icons: One for reverting back to Mayas default/native
UV Editor and an icon with a lock symbol. When toggled on, the lock will prevent the
NSUV window from being resized by the user.
 UV snapshot

(Overview of the snapshot window)

Nightshade UV Editor comes with a completely redesigned window for creating UV
layout snapshots. The UV-range section has been completely overhauled and
replaced with a more user-friendly GUI.

First set your output path and the dimension of the output file and tweak
whatever other settings you need. Next select what kind of UV range you want to
take a snapshot of. Available modes are Normal 0 -> 1 and User-specified.
The former does a standard UV snapshot that we are all familiar with, capturing
everything between 0 and 1 on the U/V range (the first quadrant).
The second mode though offers the user to set one of 6 predefined UV-ranges:
Lying rectangle, Standing rectangle, -1 to 1 or a normal snapshot from any of the
other three quadrants. Additionally you have the ability to take multiple snapshots
of multiple tiles according to UDIM standards. The prefix for the tiles will be _1001
for the first tile, _1002 for the second, etc up to a maximum of 9999 tiles.
 MARKING MENU

(Overview of the marking menu)

Nightshade UV Editor also has an improved marking menu. Like the old native one,
it is context-sensitive and can be accessed by right clicking and holding the shift key
during a UV selection.

On the marking menu you will find shortcuts for toggling various display modes,
rotating or flipping shells/UVs as well as shortcuts for aligning, stacking, orienting
and straightening your selected shells/UVs. You also have an extended sub-menu
for toggling between the most commonly used UV display modes.