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914 Chapter 8: Modifiers
and not so much to remove overlap, and is best
suited for simpler shapes.
•
Relax By Edge Angles—This default method is
similar to Relax By Face Angles except that it
usestheedgesthatareattachedtothevertices
as the shape to match. It ty pically works better
than Relax By Face Angles but tends to ta ke
longer to reach a solu tion. This method is
bested suited for more complex shapes.
•
Relax B y Centers—The original Relax method
from previous versions of 3ds Max. It relaxes
vertices based off the centroids (centers of
mass) of their faces. It does not take i nto
account the face or edge shapes/angles so it is
mainly useful for removing overlap or for faces
that are mostly rectangular.
Iterations—The number of times the Relax settings
are applied w hen you click Apply. Each iteration is
applied successively, to the results of the previous
iteration. Range=0 to 100000. Default=100.
Amount—The strength of the relaxat ion applied
per iteration. Range=0.0 to 1.0. Default=0.1.
Stretch—Theamountofstretchingthatcanoccur.
Stretching is useful mainly to resolve overlapping
texture vertices, at the cost of reintroducing
distortion into the texture mesh. Range=0.0 to
1.0. Default=0.0.
Keep Boundary Points Fixed—Controls whether
vertices at the outer edges of the texture
coordinates are moved. D efault=off.
When off, the outer edge of the texture mesh
can float, allo wing a wider range of the available
texture-mapping space to be used. Typically
you would keep this off when relaxing an entire
element or cluster, so t he software can minimize
distortion by moving the edges.
When relaxing an in terior subset of vertices, it
is recommended you turn this on to prevent the
selected vert ices from overlapping u nselected
vertices. For Relax By E dge and Face Angles, turn
this off until you get a good solution for the outer
boundaries of the mesh and then turn it on to
resolve the interior sections.
Save Outer Corners—Preserves the original
positions of texture vertices fart hest away from the
center. Available only with the Relax By Centers
method.
Apply —Begins the relaxation process using the
current s ettings. As relaxation takes place, a
textual progress indicator appears at the bottom of
the dialog, showing the current iteration (Process
frame) and the total number of iterations being
processed.
To abort the relaxation process, press
Esc .You
canthenuseUndo(
Ct rl +Z )toreturntothe
prior state, if necessary.
Set As Default—Savesallcurrentsettingsasthe
Relax defaults, so they are recalled from session
to session.
Render UVs Dialog
Unwrap UVW mo difier > Edit button (on Parameters
rollout) > Tools menu > Render UVW Template
The Render UVs dialog, p ar t of the Unwrap UVW
editor (page 1–888), lets you export a model’s
texture mapping data as a template; a bitmapped
image file. you can then import this template into
a 2D paint program, apply color as needed, and
thenbringitbackinto3dsMaxasatexturemapto
applytothemodel.Theexportedfilelookslikea
screen shot of the editor window, but without any
background texture, and has the added options of
setting color and alpha options for both the edges
and the area they cover.
For a procedure that covers usage of this dialog, see
To export texture coordinates to a paint program:
(page 1–882).