Hello all,

I am stuck with a rather mundane task but seems like a roadblock for a new user like me. For now I have 3 profile curves on which I am using revolve SOP for shapes, that will go into SubstanceDesigner. Everything is alright until the UV-mapping.

Ideally, I would split the edge vertically and then have a flattened UV island that works best for me in Designer and that's what I am trying in Houdini as well.

I have a Switch that has these profile curves plugged in and was trying a procedural way to select edges to have the seam-cut in all three shapes. I could do it manually and have 3 different UV-flatten and have another switch that will work in tandem with the profile curves, however, I would appreciate if someone can guide me in an appropriate direction to do this procedurally through VEX or otherwise.

Thank you.

if all you want to do is select the seam, then that's pretty basic. The uvflatten part, well
I'll leave that up to you.

and it would help if you would just upload the file, i mean..it's a curve and revolve..is there any worry that it contains a billion dollar IP ? it would save me time sitting here mocking up a file.

YES, my time is precious.

Edge selections procedurally are more difficult in Houdini than other programs like Modo, as they are kind of second class citizens to points and primitives. For instance, edges can't have attributes. Often it is easiest to procedurally select points or primitives and then use a group promote to convert them or their boundary to edges.

govindk
Ideally, I would split the edge vertically and then have a flattened UV island that works best for me in Designer and that's what I am trying in Houdini as well.

isn't that what Revolve does by default?
you should get very clean uvs by default, but if you want to run UV Flatten afterwards, just check Preserve Seams

vusta
if all you want to do is select the seam, then that's pretty basic. The uvflatten part, well
I'll leave that up to you.

and it would help if you would just upload the file, i mean..it's a curve and revolve..is there any worry that it contains a billion dollar IP ? it would save me time sitting here mocking up a file.

YES, my time is precious.

My apologies, I should have uploaded a mock file.
Thank you for the scene file. After opening the file, I'm a bit embarrassed at how straight forward it is, I overthinking this one. However, I did not know you could group the curve and then transfer that group.

Island
Edge selections procedurally are more difficult in Houdini than other programs like Modo, as they are kind of second class citizens to points and primitives. For instance, edges can't have attributes. Often it is easiest to procedurally select points or primitives and then use a group promote to convert them or their boundary to edges.

Read about this on other threads and I will try that too. Vusta's example file made it much easier to understand this.

tamte
isn't that what Revolve does by default?
you should get very clean uvs by default, but if you want to run UV Flatten afterwards, just check Preserve Seams

Does it? I am not sure. I tried what you mentioned and with preserve seam and it gave me a circular island instead of a straightened one. That'd work too, I just needed something that's straightened.

Thank you all for your help. Appreciate it.

govindk
Does it? I am not sure. I tried what you mentioned and with preserve seam and it gave me a circular island instead of a straightened one. That'd work too, I just needed something that's straightened.

well, it's up to you, its straightened by default so if you don't need dont use UV Flatten
I was just saying, that the seam is there, so UV flatten flattens it the same way as if you have created one seam
at least in h18

ahhh…confirmed, tamte's suggestion. Enable Preserve Seams, just works.

tamte
well, it's up to you, its straightened by default so if you don't need dont use UV Flatten
I was just saying, that the seam is there, so UV flatten flattens it the same way as if you have created one seam
at least in h18

I am on H.18, and yes it does give me the straightened UV as you mentioned, laid out on 2tiles vertically.
With revolve and preserve seam I did get the exact same result as Vusta's scene file. Now I just have to figure out what works best for me. I needed the seam selection for pinning and for editing the UV a little bit further.

a bit OT…but related…so far, you wanted to select the orig, one, seam…to do whatever you need to with it but just in case you need to select ALL the longitudes of the revolved result:

https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/73728/ [www.sidefx.com]

it's the same idea under the hood really.

Thanks a lot for directing me to the post, modding the revolve was really cool & quite informative.