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Easier texturing plugin for SU (Unwrap and flatten faces)

StORM48

StORM48

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19
Country
yugoslavia
I didn't find proper thread about this, so I wanted to share with all of you who like to do the modelling with SketchUp.

While investigating the easiest workflow for texturing my 3D models, I have found this tool, available for free:

Unwrap and Flatten Faces

Essentially, it works in the way that unwraps all the faces and makes them flat on the "floor", so you can easily align them to square and export as bitmap:

screenshot%201.jpg


It's purpose isn't that by itself, but I found it very usefull. After you solve the puzzle :), you can export top down view as bitmap and then paint proper textures with right dimensions and orientation, to avoid later problems which jumps in if you resize the parts of the texture (As I remember, these problems includes exporting to multiple textures instead of one map). If you paint them in various colors so you can recognize the faces easier, the Photoshop part should be much more a pleasure, than a pain. :)

I hope that my explanation of this tool isn't too much confusing, so if anyone finds this helpful, I'm glad I shared it! ;)

Best regards,
Dragan
 
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I forgot to add few words about my (short) expirience with this tool.

As the plugin uses some kind of random unwrap mechanics, sometimes it can produce major headaches with unwraping mostly unusable results. The solution is rather simple - select as less as possible faces at the same time (faces which aren't close to each other are recommended to select) and then click "flatten faces" in context menu. Selecting one by one is even better, although it could produce more work than desired.

This kind of technique is rather slower than most of us wish for, but it's safe and more precise, as you can easily recongnize which is which.

EDIT: WARNING! Make backup of original SKP file, as the unwrap actions are permanent. Undo is possible, but slow. Making the temporal SKP for unwraping purpose is highly recommended!

Happy modelling!
Dragan
 
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