Using this UV unwrapper was really easy once I got used to how the tools functioned. The only problem I had with it was that individual UV islands were some-what annoying to manipulate as you're required to select all of the individual vertices of that island.
https://www.uvlayout.com/
https://www.uvlayout.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=67
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkk8GoQ7g6A
This unwrapping tool is a lot more fully fledged than roadkill. The user interface is quite simplistic and out of the way, you don't actually need it for the most part. Keyboard short cuts cover most of your needs concerning splitting, welding, aligning and pelting UVs. The split tool is intelligent in comparison to roadkill, you can select an edge and it'll assume a route along that edge where it thinks you'll want to split, you can weld off areas you don't want it to split and keep cutting to help guide it. Once you're done you can commit it in a number of ways.
I used both of these programs to unwrap this simple bottle model I made in Maya.
This is my first attempt at unwrapping the bottle mesh properly using Roadkill. As you can see it looks quite good, none of islands seem to have too much squash or stretch except for that one near the lip of the bottle.
However when viewed in UVLayout the squash and stretch is measured based on the entire model to account for relative detail in the texture, this reveals how much each pixel of the texture is being stretched and squashed as opposed to island specific squash and stretch.
You can see that the detail level varies alot, the blue areas indicate stretching and red indicates squashing, I don't mind the fact that those islands are being squashed though as they're internal. It is a problem that roadkill can't show this information, so I won't be using it in the future.
Here's my final unwrap, there's very little squash and stretch and the overall detail is pretty consistent. I've used the alignment tools to keep the UVs straight so I can use the offset tool in photoshop to make sure the textures wrap seamlessly.
Controls for UVLayout are quite odd so I've written them up here for reference, as well as a simplistic work flow.
Export .obj file of model from Maya.
Drag and drop obj onto Headus UVLayout shortcut
Make sure "new" and "clean" are ticked, then press load.
Pressing 1, 2 and 3 send you to different parts of the viewport.
1 - UV editing
2 - interactive orthographic view for splitting and welding the model
3- obj as imported with texture view to highlight errors in the unwrap.
Standard mouse controls for navigation:
Left click to rotate camera, Middle click to translate, and Right click to zoom.
Controls for use in view 2, the first stage of unwrapping.
Space + Mouse keys - rotate, translate,re-size separate objects
Home - centres the camera on individual object under cursor
Hover Mouse + C - cut edge under cursor
Hover Mouse + W - weld edge under cursor
Shift + S - split along the path you've created (red and yellow lines, yellow lines are prediction, red shows your choice)
D - drops the object into the uv island editing area
Shift + D - raises the uv back into the orthogonal view
Controls for use in view 1, the second stage
R - straight pelting (this will force the uv island into a grid shape, this is very easy arguably easier to texture but it might be more distorted than a relaxed pelt)
F (hold) - pelt mesh (this can only be used in view 1, it attempts to flatten the UV island when held down, this is the relaxed and will give the least distortion but will not necessarily be straight)
Shift + F - boundary pelt mesh (again, only functional in view 1, it pulls the island into a circular shape and then attempts to flatten with as little distortion as possible, you do not need to press and hold for this to work)
Space bar - stops operations like the boundary pelt or packing.
Control + Right click - move vertice
Shift + Right click - softly move area of verts
O (hold) - are relax good for conforming squashed areas
Controls for view 3, the final stage, checking for distortion.
The colour of the distortion texture indicates how it is being stretch on the uv. Blue colours show that the texture will be stretched, Green colours indicate a good level of accuracy, Red hues show that the texture will be squashed.
T - switch texture (You can switch between a standard checker, checker with numbers, and the colour stretch indicating texture)
Minus - and + Plus - scale the
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Packing operation - Make sure to highlight "Best", give a "bleed" value of 2 or 3, tick "shrink boxes to fit", rotate ticked
If you're unable to do anything it's probably because you've pressed a command while your mouse was in empty space, you can click on and off a uv to allow the program to function again as normal or you can press enter, usually this happens because of pressing D in open area to drop a uv that isn't under the cursor.
