more lightwave viewer problems...

[rabid pitbull]

I have had aura for about a month now and have had nothing but trouble getting the lightwave viewer to work, and now i have a new problem. for some reason the mesh is being distorted overlay is not correct in aura. I have done so many things trying to get this to work.

I am running w2k sp3 now, and have also updated all my drivers to try to find a solution. Uninstalled and reinstalled both LW and aura on a seperate partition from os and tried every other troblshooting technique i can think of.

The newest problem only seems to happen on files from before aura was installed.... I am baffled by this, but if anyone has any advise let me know.

thanks,
James

here are som screen graps showing the problem.

http://www.rabidpitbull.com/temp/lightwaveUV.JPG



http://www.rabidpitbull.com/temp/auraUV.JPG

[Dangerman]

I haven't gotten anything useful out of the Aura LW connection yet, so take this with a grain of salt.

Your problem might disappear if you save two copies of your model. One you intend to use your maps on, and another one for the UV's. Unweld the UV version and these distortions should go away.

Some people even subdivide the UV version to up the poly count ... I can't imagine how that helps, but hey, I haven't gotten anything useful out of this yet.

Good luck

[rabid pitbull]

that is a good idea. I will try it later. Sort of takes the workflow out of the plugin. I already have a seperate version since the acs skelegons will crash aura immediatly.

so who is gonna fix this plugin? Newtek or TVPaint? Neither seems to have an answer.... seems this version is in limbo. We will all probably have to buy into tvpaint to get a functional version.:mad:

[rabid pitbull]

it does work now, but i am getting the old no layer selected error now. fortunatly it loads the image and then you can get the mesh to load by going back to the layer select screen....:rolleyes:

so many holes in this plugin. makes you wonder if the untimely split of newtek and the aura team is related.

[stoehr]

Originally posted by rabid pitbull
it does work now, but i am getting the old no layer selected error now. fortunatly it loads the image and then you can get the mesh to load by going back to the layer select screen....:rolleyes:

so many holes in this plugin. makes you wonder if the untimely split of newtek and the aura team is related.

I'm not a programmer but, I think this isn't a problem of the Aura lightwave viewer. It's a problem related to Lightwaves native UV abilities. What you are seeing are the UV's of the seams.

To remove the line crossing the UV map:
1. Unweld the UV's
2. Select all poly's and Hide them
3. Select the remaning points (these are the points of the perimeter)
4. Set UV value (Map> Set UV) to 0 for both the U and V
5. Unhide
6. Merge
7. Now bring it to Aura.

This occurs for every one of my surfaces, and is not the fault of Aura (as far as I can tell).

[stoehr]

Also, this is something that shows up when using the UVImaginator too. So I go through the above steps on each suface.

[rabid pitbull]

the thing that is strange is that i have had uvs go in fine to aura. it is only models from before aura was installed. I always unweld and move the seem edge points on a cylindrical map to be safe. I haven't tried the set uv value trick yet. maybe that will work better. thanks for the tips!

i have actually contacted both newtek and tvpaint folks on my viewer problems. tvpaint has told me that they know there are issues with the plugin and they will be repairing it as part of a contract with newtek.:D of course they need users to report the problems so they can find the bugs. In defense of the both teams i have to say that the support has been very impressive, although newtek tends to have the attitude that it is out of their hands...:rolleyes: I do say after talking with tvpaint i am feeling much better about these problems getting resolved.

[stoehr]

I'm very excited about the Newtek/TV Paint communication too!

[rabid pitbull]

hey i tried doing the set uv value thing, and doesn't seem to leave any points for a cylindrical map. Works on planer maps, but not cylindrical. Could i have a problem with lightwave here? only time i remember using that trick was for layer uvs on a single surface, never used them for single surface uv's.

[stoehr]

The seam points won't show up unless the map shares an edge with another map (I'm very close to positively sure on this one).

I always use this process for single surface UV's, it helps keep everything accurate. I always use planes and cylinders for UV maps. I'm also using UV Edit Pro from D-Storm. And as far as I can tell, UV Edit Pro makes all maps planar, even if the initial unwrap was cylindrical (Again, I'm very close to being positively sure on this). BTW, UV Edit Pro is vey nice. Takes the mystery out of UV mapping.

EDIT: final note, I always retouch and refine my UV maps with the native Lightwave UV view. UV Edit Pro unwelds and merges the maps in a peculiar way, so I always Unweld and merge everything after editing in UV Edit Pro, and then do the above set value process. This seems to clean up an inconsistencies when using Lightwave, Aura, and UV Edit Pro all together. It was kinda tricky figuring out all of the subtleties of the three programs.

[rabid pitbull]

Thanks again Matthew, now it makes sense. I have a single surface object, so that explains why there were no points left.

next step is to write all the problems down with there work arounds with the steps to repeat the problem. Then i will send it off to the contacts at tvpaint and newtek. I am glad that all of the awesome forum folks have been so helpful. Really is one of newteks greatest strengths. I would be bald from pulling my hair out otherwise.:D

-James

[AstroSeth]

Concerning the error message "No Layer Selected",
In my case, it keeps coming up until I assign the surface in the very layer not to a plain UV map but to a discontinuous UV map.
Indeed this error message seems not meaningfull.

I peeped into some good and bad objects in binary mode. My good UV mapped object always had VMAD chunk (discontinuous map list) in each layer list in the lwo format.

Atsuro Seto
http://www.cc.rim.or.jp/~atsuro/