Using/exporting objects with projected/cropped textures?

bjornkn · 16 Mar 2014, 14:28

I'm a big fan of tgi3D's PhotoScan tools, and as such I end up with SkKetchUp scenes that are full of background/photomatch images. A small scene is typically from 100MB and up.
This causes some problems..

It works OK inside SU with up to 70-80 images, but it is completely impossible to send/use such scenes to Layout
When applying a projected texture to a smooth part of an object it looks fine inside SU. But it will be exported with the full image, even if it uses only a small slice of it.
Furthermore - if using the "Make unique texture" it will crop the image and leave only the used part. Thais is fine with normal PhotoMatch scenes I guess, where there are mostly larger flat areas. But if this is done on a curved surface, SU will split it up into one single texture image per triangle/face.
The problem is that in a PhotoScan project you can typically end up with lots of non-flat areas/surfaces, and then end up with hundreds/thousands of small texture files (which does not look good inside SU neither).

The question is if there is a plugin (or some other way) to export/save as skp (or/and other 3D formats) with proper UV mapping based on the cropped projected photos?
This should hopefully solve any problems with using such textured photogrammetry files in SU/Layout, and also other problems?

The thing is that I think I had a solution for this earlier, but I cannot remember how I did it?
Or am I just mixing this up with the way it works in other photogrammetry programs which I've used, like Imagemodeler and Photomodeler (and Canoma)?

There is a tool in PhotoScan, 'Create texture..', which deals with this, sort of, but I don't feel that I have enough control when using it. And it generates new bitmaps where usually 60% or more is not used for the texture image. No stretching of bitmaps, but no packing neither - and no seams settings..
SketchUV has some nice tools, but isn't really targeted at grabbing/cropping textures from photos. External programs like Roadkill, Ultimate Unwrap etc doesn't really help neither, I think?

I would really hate to go back to ImageModeler or Photomodeler (of which I don't have the current versions anyway..), as PhotoScan works so much better for my use..

mitcorb · 16 Mar 2014, 18:45

Have you tested Fredo's ThruPaint for this? Maybe some other UV tools?
I assume you have posted at tgi3d support?

bjornkn · 16 Mar 2014, 22:46

@mitcorb said:

Have you tested Fredo's ThruPaint for this? Maybe some other UV tools?
I assume you have posted at tgi3d support?

I think this is really a SU problem, as it is SU who splits a smoothed face into lots of small triangle face texture files/materials?

Thanks for the tip, but according to the docs about it it doesn't seem to be able to do this job, although it looks like a very useful (which I have had installed for a while, but never really used..).
After fiddling around with the tgi3D Create Texture, I'm starting to get a better grasp of what what works ok and what doesn't.
What is interesting too is that with the tgi3D Move tool vertices can be moved around without scrambling the textures/UVs. Works very well for finetuning "UVs"