Blender unwrapping script

[Czestmyr]

Hello, again, people!

This idea has been in my head for a while and I have finally decided to start working on it. Yes, you're guessing it right - it's the powerful magnificient superb bugfree Blender 1:1 mesh unwrapping tool! I've been working on this for a large portion of today's afternoon and finally am proud to present to you the Blender Unwrapper v0.0! It's not so great and superb and not at all bugfree, as I have mentioned earlier, but at least, it works. No texture support included yet, but I'm still very proud of myself Just check out the picture:


Blender Unwrapper at work. No textures or flaps yet, but you can already affect the final shape of the piece by selecting edges, along which the algorithm cuts the model.

I can post the code here, if you wish, but it really is very conceptual at the moment, so I don't recommend this. But I hope to improve it to a stable and usable state.

[Stev0]

Speaking for myself. I'd rather have Texture support over flap creation anyday.

Nice work though indeed.

[barry]

Another unwrap tool would be good though and what would be even nicer would be a curve fitting program to go with it. It's many years since I could write programs that fast. I will watch with interest (not a lot of comprehension unfortunately)

A question if I may when I loaded Blender all I kept getting was a message saying load "Python" not having a clue I looked for this program and loaded it still got the same comment again. Gave up after that and went back to metseq no staying power.

Please go on with the thread

regards


barry

[rmks2000]

Congratulations on getting Blender to unwrap! Perhaps others on the Blender forum can assist you in adding new features, now that the basic function has been built.

[Czestmyr]

Thanks for feedback, everyone.
2 barry: I'm afraid, I can't help you with your Blender problem. Maybe, if you specified it a little bit. What platform are you running on? Cause win32 version should have python interpreter embedded.
2 rmks2000: The unwrapping algorithm was the hardest thing. Now, it's fun already.

[donatas]

Hello, Czestmyr.

A little question: what is the difference between Your script and the native Blender unwrap tool? Aren't You reinventig the wheel?


D.

[Czestmyr]

Originally Posted by donatas

Hello, Czestmyr.

A little question: what is the difference between Your script and the native Blender unwrap tool? Aren't You reinventig the wheel?


D.

No, not at all. The native Blender unwrapping tool's purpose is not to unwrap the faces and keep their proportions 1:1 with the original model. Its purpose is just to flatten the model with minimal (but not negligible!) distortion, in order to make the model texturable easily. Just try to unwrap a model with the original tool, print it out and try to glue it together. I guess, you'll have no success (unless a new version of Blender, I don't know about, appeared recently, including a new 1:1 unwrapper ).

[John Griffin]

I draw my flaps on in 2D after unfolding the geometry anyway. It's easier that way to get them to fit into the white space between parts on the page.

[Maurice]

................. (unless a new version of Blender, I don't know about, appeared recently, including a new 1:1 unwrapper ).

Do you know about "Unfolder"?

http://celeriac.net/unfolder/index.html

http://celeriac.net/unfolder/lib/217/Unfolder.py

Woody over at the "German village" has been working with it

http://www.kartonbau.de/wbb2/thread....tuser=0&page=1

http://www.kartonbau.de/wbb2/thread....tuser=0&page=1

http://kartonbau-aktiv.de/wbb2/threa...5f2eaaa&page=1

I'm not sure if that's all of his threads.
Perhaps a fellow villager could help.

[Czestmyr]

Originally Posted by Maurice

Do you know about "Unfolder"?

http://celeriac.net/unfolder/index.html

http://celeriac.net/unfolder/lib/217/Unfolder.py

Woody over at the "German village" has been working with it

http://www.kartonbau.de/wbb2/thread....tuser=0&page=1

http://www.kartonbau.de/wbb2/thread....tuser=0&page=1

http://kartonbau-aktiv.de/wbb2/threa...5f2eaaa&page=1

I'm not sure if that's all of his threads.
Perhaps a fellow villager could help.

Wow, nice script! Seems like I've spent some of my time reinventing the wheel. But nevermind. It was fun and I've learnt a lot in the process. I've decided not to abandon my own script, but rather create a nice frontend for it and make it easier to use for model creation. I also think, that "Unfolder" doesn't support textures. My own script already does - I've added texture support into v. 0.1
Hoping to produce something presentable soon.

[Czestmyr]

Hello again, I'm proud to present another picture of my Unwrapper tool for Blender in action. This picture demonstrates the texture support, I've recently added.


The colors are strange, but you can find correctly colored version in my gallery.

[Maurice]

It was fun and I've learnt ...

This is very good, I was worried you might be put off.
What format or formats do you intend to use for export?
I really would like to see a .dxf option.


Woody is now running a construction thread
http://www.kartonbau.de/wbb2/thread....430#post111430

[Czestmyr]

Originally Posted by Maurice

[...]
What format or formats do you intend to use for export?
[...]

I was thinking about .svg and I started reading the specs already. Another option I was thinking about would be .pdf

[Czestmyr]

YEEEESSS!!!
I finally got texture support into my blend->svg exporter! The textures had bad transformations yesterday at two o'clock in the morning, but I managed to repair it today. I only had to swap two vectors, which I had interchanged.
A simple moral for all of you: Don't work, when you're tired!

[Czestmyr]

Blender Unwrapper is dead, long live the B-Paperizer!

Today (better said, yesterday) I finished the first usable version of my Blender unwrapping script. I also made up a new name for it - B-Paperizer. I know it sounds strange, but that's the purpose. This is a screenshot of the script in action:

First, you need to have a texturized model (I will have to continue with my blender tutorials). Then you select all faces and convert them to triangles. Then, unselect everything and select just those edges that should become cuts. Click "Unfold", select a paper size, click "Create borders" to see the paper borders, place your unfolded model inside the borders and click "SVG Export" And you have a nice textured unfold of a 3D model. Just add flaps, print, cut out, glue, etc..., etc...
If you want to try my script out, see the attached file. The .py file has to be copied into the Blender script directory in order for Blender to "see" it.