[Plugin] UVEditor 0.30

Marginal

The tools that SketchUp offers for texturing Faces have their good points and bad points.
Good:

When using Texture → Position it's easy to understand and visualise what's going on.
Once someone has pointed you to a video (like this one) explaining how it works, projecting textures is a powerful technique.Bad:
Texture → Position only works on single Faces.
Whether positioning textures on a single Face or projecting a texture across many Faces, it's difficult to get really accurate positioning - e.g. the pixel or sub-pixel accuracy that's required when using a texture atlas.
This plugin aims to address the above "Bad" points by offering a traditional UV Editor. It's loosely inspired by Blender's "UV/Image Editor", but with a SketchUp user interface and interaction model. Here's a screen shot of it in action:

Requirements: SketchUp 8 or later. MacOS 10.5 or later, or Windows XP or later with IE 9 or later.

Quick start:

Download and install the plugin in the usual way:
Mac: choose SketchUp → Preferences → Extensions → Install Extension
Windows: choose Windows → Preferences → Extensions → Install Extension
Re-start SketchUp if upgrading from an older version of this plugin.* Use Tools → UV Editor to display the "UV Editor" window.
Select one or more Faces in the main SketchUp window; the "UV Editor" window shows the UV assignments of the selected faces. Note: Because the "UV Window" only shows one texture at a time, only those faces that use the same texture file are shown.
Use the mouse wheel or zoom gesture in the "UV Editor" window as desired to focus on the UV assignments of interest to you.
In the "UV Editor" window select one or more UV points, and use the "Move", "Rotate" or "Scale" tool to adjust them.

Other features:

The "Export UV layout" button in the "UV Editor" window saves a PNG with the selected faces' UV coordinates outlined in it. You can use these outlines to help paint your texture.
The plugin provides a toolbar which currently has two buttons:
UV Editor window: This just does the same thing as the Tools → UV Editor menu option.
Project UVs from View: This provides an alternative to SketchUp's built-in texture projection - the texture is projected from the current camera view rather than from a plane. (This is similar to Blender's "Project From View" feature).I hope to add more projection and unwrapping choices in future.

This is an alpha release - it's functional but missing some features:

~~Rotate and Scale tools not implemented.~~
Numeric input not implemented.
No manual (but context-sensitive help is shown in the status bar).
No support for ~~projecting or~~ unwrapping (but other built-in tools and 3rd-party plugins support unwrapping).

I'm publishing this as an alpha because I'm looking for feedback:

Is this kind of tool useful?
Is there an existing tool that does this better?
Is it easy to use?
What functionality is missing?
etc.

Finally, thanks to those who have posted guidance and code snippets in the Developers forum, especially to thomthom for his Sketchup WebDialogs - The Lost Manual.

Marginal_UVEditor_v0.30.rbz

Krisidious

Very kool... I'll give it a try. That's quite a first post.

jeff hammond

@marginal said:

Is this kind of tool useful?

yes, of course

@unknownuser said:

[*]Is there an existing tool that does this better?

maybe not exactly because i'm still possibly missing some functionality you're trying to offer which isn't available in other plugins but have you seen ThruPaint by fredo yet?

http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=44552

@unknownuser said:

[*]Is it easy to use?

hmm.. not really.. or, it seems like it would take a really long time to edit the uvs so all the texture lines match up in this example.. but again, i'm probably overlooking a scenario where it's useful or not as complicated.

Screen Shot 2014-04-13 at 3.41.56 PM.jpg

@unknownuser said:

[*]What functionality is missing?

i kept wanting to grab a point and drag it.. instead of select a point then switch to move tool in order to move it..

[EDIT] nevermind-- i can do that if i have the move tool selected instead of the selection arrow [/edit]

@unknownuser said:

[*]etc.

seems like it would would be better if the uveditor window stayed on top of the sketchup window.. as in- if i select a surface in sketchup, the uv window goes behind sketchup and i have to bring it back to the front.. seems as if you're using the plugin, the window should always stay on top?

crazy first post though
nice!

Pixero

Very interesting. Will have to try this.
One of SU long missed functions.

kaas

Nice first post! Something to enhance the mapping process has been on my wish-list for a long time.
I wanted to try your plugin but I'm not sure what's going wrong here. Front face has texture on it, face is selected, UVeditor launched but no image or points appear in the editor... Any idea what I am doing wrong here?

On Win 7 X64 - SUpro 2014.

Pixero

I have the same problem.

mitcorb

Probably not relevant, but has this been designed for SU 2013 and 2014, also?

solo

@pixero said:

I have the same problem.

I'm also getting blank window SU 2014

Pixero

I see in his post he shows it with SketchUp on a Mac. Maybe there is something not working with the Windows version? I have a Macbook Pro at home I'll try it there and see if it works...

Pixero

This is what I get on Windows 8 with Internet Explorer 11:

dlg = UI;;WebDialog.new()
dlg.show_modal do
dlg.execute_script('document.body.innerText=navigator.userAgent;')
end
true

And a empty window appears.

Pixero

Just tried it on my MacBook and all I can see no matter how I select or zoom is 1 (one) vertex???

kaas

@pixero said:

This is what I get on Windows 8 with Internet Explorer 11:

dlg = UI;;WebDialog.new()
> dlg.show_modal do
> dlg.execute_script('document.body.innerText=navigator.userAgent;')
> end
> true

And a empty window appears.

Same here on Win7 IE11

driven

@PC folk,

looking at the code it is Windows friendly, but does have a line in the javascript

//Called after DOM inititialised. Not called under IE<9 since DOMContentLoaded not supported

so that may be your issue...

post your SU 'used' IE version if you shooting blanks...

if unsure what version SU uses, paste this into 'Ruby Console'

dlg = UI;;WebDialog.new()
dlg.show_modal do
dlg.execute_script('document.body.innerText=navigator.userAgent;')
end

then copy/paste the [highlight=#fff:1j1tkcft]EDIT: text in the WebDialog[/highlight:1j1tkcft]back into a reply...
looks like this on my mac

mine [on mac] contains this
@unknownuser said:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_9_2) AppleWebKit/537.74.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) SketchUp/14.0 (Mac; Safari)

john

driven

it does look like browser version issue,

also I edited my earlier post, 3 above...
to show which bit I copy pasted back...

john

Marginal

I've edited the first post to clarify system requirements, namely:
SketchUp 8 or later. MacOS 10.5 or later, or Windows XP or later with IE 9 or later.

And to upload a new version:

Fix for texture not appearing in UV Editor window on Windows.
UV Editor window stays on top.
Please let me know if you're still having trouble getting started.

@jeff hammond said:

it seems like it would take a really long time to edit the uvs so all the texture lines match up in this example.. but again, i'm probably overlooking a scenario where it's useful or not as complicated.
I'd envisaged it being useful for tweaking the position of textures that have already been projected.

But I'm starting to think that to be truly useful it's going to have to support a range of unwrapping and projection tools. (I looked at ThruPaint and, as far as I can tell, it doesn't offer these).

jolran

is the body ready ? Try with a button..

html = <<-HTML
		<!DOCTYPE html>
		<html>
		<body>
			<input type='button' onclick='alert(document.body.innerText=navigator.userAgent);'>
		</body>
		</html>
	HTML
	dlg = UI;;WebDialog.new()
	dlg.set_html(html)
	dlg.show_modal

Pixero

Installed v0.2 still nothing visible with Windows 7 and IE9.

kaas

@pixero said:

Installed v0.2 still nothing visible with Windows 7 and IE9.

You are sure you are using v0.2? I had to remove v0.1 first before v0.2 was being used.

jolran

Hi. Get an "undefined" JavaScript error on line 636.

I see in the JS code "ctx.drawImage" is being called. BUT I can't see it has been assigned anywhere..

Pixero

@kaas said:

@pixero said:

Installed v0.2 still nothing visible with Windows 7 and IE9.

You are sure you are using v0.2? I had to remove v0.1 first before v0.2 was being used.

I uninstalled and reinstalled v0.2 but nothing is visible in the UV editor.
SketchUp 2014, Windows 7 and IE9.