Better quality uv maps / texture space usage

Development Asset Creation
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Hi!
After using reality capture extensively i have noticed that alot of my uvmaps that the program generates are still (it did get alot better from the release candidate to the beta) not using available the uv space very well. Sometimes the space is 1/8th of the actual space of the texture sheet, forcing me to up the resolution of my texture to sizes that makes the process a lot longer and file size incredibly large.
Because the models im working with is usufally close to 70 million tris and i dont want to simplify them, i cant take the model into another program to uv map as any other program to my knowledge simply can not handle those sizes and uv map at the same time.
It would be really good if we could see some improvements to the uv space usage. Some quick points of what that would be:

  1. After UVing in RC, a quick “Layout” button that lays out all the shells evenly sized across the entire uv space instead of stacking them at the bottom. This could/should be done automatically after the unwrap process is done.

  2. More Unwrap options such such as planar or automatic box projection mapping (with amount of angles adjustable)

  3. A way to view the UVmap after the process, just like in other 3d packages.

This would really help bring up the quality in the textures that the program creates with smaller texture sizes needed!

Regards
//Pontus

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Hi, Thank you for the post. There will be more tools and we will update algorithm slightly. There will be also more unwrapping styles.

The planar or automatic box projection mapping (with amount of angles adjustable) is on plan but with low priority.

You can use ‘Unwrap tool’ and fixed texel size and try to increase texel size you have in your model slightly to get better utilization.

You can also use 4096 texture resolution and fixed texel size … it can generate you many textures. This however usually gives better ustilization. Then during export you can select export to one texture. Be carefull because this way you can lower ‘gutter’ ( when RC downscales textures to fit the selected maximal resolution ). Having too small gutter, i.e. small space between charts, can lead to visible artefacts when browsing exported mesh. Gutter = 2 should be OK in most cases.