Hey guys, I've been using 2012 now for my bulldozer part 2, pretty happy with it. The UV'ing is great since you don't need to install UVtools 1.5 anymore. or so I thought, because 2 features I can't find the alternative for anymore:

-Ctrl-click selection converting. Like, select a ring of edges in UV's/3D view, ctrl click the poly button to convert. This because you still can't do decent rings/loops with poly's in the UV editor's 3D view.
-Scale type in! I actually really need this right now, since I'm doing a 2:1 UV layout. Normally I'd rescale the UV field, so my UV's end up all distorted (i've unwrapped them with a square setup first), then i just use the type in to scale them back out, compensating for the 50% squish. But the type in seems gone in 2012, did they just not use it?

I hope there's some 2012 expert here to help me out, I feel like it'd be stupid to install UVtools 1.5 just for this, as 90% of it's functions are in 2012 by default.

Originally Posted by Xoliul

-Ctrl-click selection converting.

Yea never been added to the UV editor. I've been after them for years to add it, I really hoped with the changes in 2012 that they would of added it but sadly they didn't.

The crappy thing is they have the conversion functions tucked away in the selection menu, but its fuck-all brain bending to use. There might be a way to script it...

Originally Posted by Xoliul

-Scale type in! I actually really need this right now, since I'm doing a 2:1 UV layout. Normally I'd rescale the UV field, so my UV's end up all distorted (i've unwrapped them with a square setup first), then i just use the type in to scale them back out, compensating for the 50% squish. But the type in seems gone in 2012, did they just not use it?

You should be able to set the size to a 2:1 ratio in Options > Preferences?

Also if you assign a texture with right ratio and select it from the upper left drop down list (switch checker to your material) it should snap to the right ratio.

For the first one, the solution is this for me: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=84795

Second one no idea if it's possible. Haven't come across anything like that off the bat. As Mark said, it's in options, not readily available.

Ok that script fixes the first problem, cool. Still silly they copy UVtools and then omit a function like this.

Second one, mark, won't work like that. If I set it to 2:1, it also rescales all my Uv contents along, stretching them out to twice their width. I use the type-in afterwards to scale em back to 50% width. But I figured I can use percent snap with the UV freeform scale tool, I think that could work...

Ace: Oh man I forgot about FB's quick convert scripts... awesome!

Xoliul: Yea that works if you set it that way to start. That's a good idea using % snap, never thought of that, always fired up an old version of max that had chuggnuts tools and used that, heh. But after a few times of doing that I just always set it up ahead of time.

MoP had a way to set the UV editor to default display any material instead of the checker but I can't remember how he did it... had to fiddle pretty deep with max's naughty bits to get it to work but once set it was great. I would set the material up and it would always match.

I've got another one:

-Can I do type-in moves, to offset UV pieces exactly 1 unit?

Yeah, you can. Bottom left of the 2012 UV window, there are boxes for U, V and W. In the corner is a button that toggles whether the values you enter are relative or absolute. Switch to relative, type in 1.

Thanks! I knew about the type in, but only used it absolute, good to know it can be useful in other ways.

You could also use UVW Xform modifier, works great for me ;)