Yes I know I was mistaken I had already posted a while ago about MODO> but this one even beats modo… if it is real.
http://www.sunitparekh.com/movies/pelting/fatalien_example_0_2.mov
http://www.sunitparekh.com/movies/pelting/lizard_unwrap_checker_0_2.mov
Holy friggin crap! Now that was cool.
The checker anim was even more impressive.
BgDM
I’m not sure because I haven’t downloaded it yet, but that pelt mapping vid looks like the new pelt-mapping tool in 3dsmax 8.
I know there’s been quite a bit of hype about it. 
hmm. Well I did say I wasn’t sure where it looked familiar 
So what is that tool running in? or for? I can’t work it out. Is it a blender plugin? A standalone?
Standalone could be interesting as it’s application non-specific.
OH well, keep the eyes open on this one :o
Well there is a screen. It showed Maya window.
I’ve never used or even touch Maya so I wouldn’t know.
Hmm, so it’s for maya eh? Oh well. I’m sure somewhere somebody is doing an open-source version. We can but hope 
it says in the site that each verticces or face has a spring to it… Soooo maybe the softbody code could be kinda used to mimick it ??
Yes exactly my thought too.
Way back when I was first getting into CG with maya, I wondered why in the hell something like this hadn’t been developed. I’d like to be excited, but I find myself thinking “well it’s about damn time!”
It looks good. It makes sense to use a spring based system. Softbody dynamics tries to maintain the surface area of individual faces on a mesh so it’s quite well suited for UV unwrapping, which essentially tries to do the same thing.
Maybe if you could combine Blender’s LSCM with softbodies somehow you could get the same sorta thing. It looks like instead of fixed pins, it uses springs round the outside.
I think LSCM is fine though. It says in the 3DS Max features than this reduces UV mapping from hours to minutes. Well, it only takes minutes with LSCM so I don’t think it’s all that much better.
Also, the spring based system doesn’t work well with inorganic models and LSCM does. Plus, because the springs are only on the outside, you can still get overlapping on loops in the middle of the model like eyesockets. With Blender, the pins can go anywhere.
It’s just another marketing thing IMO - wrt to 3ds max I mean. They have to come up with new features to sell a product and hype it up. Blender doesn’t need to make the sale so it doesn’t get the attention it deserves.
If that guy makes his script open then it might be able to incorporate into Blender quite easily. At least it’s another feature to play with :).
There is a script that unwraps a geometry to a flat surface. And we have soft body system. And we have a script that copies one uvmap to another. Its just to combine those. I believe its possible.
To bad I´m no programer.
The video is a bit misleading though, you still have to create the seam yourself. So in a way, it’s not that different from normal unwrapping.
either way what ever naysayers say. LSCm is still imature as a feature, still a best guess and try out work flow. Tuhopuu had some extra features for it kinda slow though. Will Blender CVS see those ?
Well when I saw the first movie, wasn’t it like. Cut the model on some places, caculate the distance between vertices and project the model flat on the screen.
So it checks how far vertices are lying from each other, so the edges won’t increase or decrease in lenght, and where it will increase or decrease, cut the model there and seperate it from another faces?
Mmh anways it really looked awesome 
Well at least you can get your hands on LSCM. It’s not that hard to use. In most cases it’s downright easy. You just mark seams, pin and pull or push your pins into a uv map that works for you. Pin as many points as you need to. Then you apply LSCM with the “E” key every time you move your pinned points. Your mesh will stretch in the direction that you move your pins to. That’s about it.
The LSCM process may be more automatic than this in the future. Hopefully it will take the dimensions and resolution of the map and actual mesh layout into account. It would be cool if LSCM tried to keep the mesh layout as consistent to the actual mesh faces as possible. By then Blender may have some added uv painting features to boot. We may just call it “Smart UV Mapping” by then.Hehehe.
Blend on!
I hope i’m not spoiling any secret blender developpement but i saw Brecht at the BConf working on a new uvmapping tool that was really impressive. Maybe more than this “Pelt Mapping” Basically it was like LSCM but it was optimized in a way that keep the faces area at uvmapping. It looked very nice.
well unless it comes out or not another idea could be had like a script. A script to auto select all edge vertices of the mesh that are created by the unwrap and scale out those pins to try and do the pelt method. Cause if you keep saying that the pins are the answer then this should kinda work…
It would be nice if we could simply create material groups then mark seams for those groups. Then later we could apply “some type of mapping” that unwraps the mesh material groups perfectly and automatically. Then as we select each material group we see our mesh unwrapped in the image window. We could then tweak it as need be.
Optimally a perfect solution would be to have this type of unwrapping process in connection with a uv painting process. If we had the complete power of Gimp built into this process it would be near perfect.
Tell us if you can. Hehehe.