I have been messing around with max 8 pelt mapping. i have had mixed results so far. I preferred the wings 3d version , but I don't enjoy the navigation controls in wings.
Part of me says that pelt mapping just a gimmick and doing it by hand is better.
What are your views on this.

It's a gimmick and doing it by using the new Relax options is better. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I agree with FatAssasin. I just planar map the whole mesh, select all the edges that I want to be seams, hit CTRL-B in the UVW window to Break those edges, then just select all and do a Relax operation on it. Bingo, instant perfectly-scaled, distortion-free pieces.
I then go and tweak by hand to line things up and arrange to fit neatly.

Pelt mapping is a tedious process for a function that could be much more simple...such as Wings3D's method. I have my Wings3D navigation set to Maya, so switching from XSI and back gets confusing. So I prefer lots of manual planar, and cylinder mapping with relaxing in XSI. Sometimes walking on the mesh.

I am going to have to agree that the relax function is what I use most of the time. The pelt mapping I find is only good for arms and legs. Anything with large amounts of structure that you want to keep relative to how you want to paint I would go with relax dialogue. I tried pelt mapping a whole head in max but it came out like crap. Instead I just made 4 pelt seems and did relax. Then just pieced them together and its perfect. Really the pelt mapping is twitchy but their relax dialogue makes up for it.

while I cant comment on max8, the wings3d/blender3d method was ported to max by me see:
http://boards.polycount.net/showflat...p;page=1#69697

I am looking forward to more feedback/bug reports...

ise the pelt map JUST for its point to point seam selection features, after you make the seams, you just break out the new relax tools

sry to bring back an old thread but is there a way to turn point to point seems into edge selections?

i just gotten around to try this and personally i think its awesome.. first time i actually thought it was fun to Unwrap [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Not that I know of. It seems like a huge oversite that they would just keep this new way of selecting edges in the pelt mapping function only. Maybe with the service pack or version 9 they'll break it out to the rest of the program.

the max 8 demo i saw a bit back before it was released, the demo guy mentioned that they will probably bring point to point selection into normal edit poly work flow someday soon

i hope so