hello all I'm trying to find a work flow or a tool that will allow me to duplicate a mesh flatten it then morph it to it's original shape. I've searching around and found some techniques but once I flatten the mesh I cant morph it back.

I could be way off the mark here... but is this what you want?:

http://www.garydave.com/jing/MorphFlatten.swf

Edit
Seems to work fine the other way around too. ie, apply the Morpher mod to the flattened mesh and use the original as the morph target.

What it needs to do is have the ability to flatten an object based off it's uv set then morph it back to it original shape.

http://slidelondon.com/ used to offer a plugin called slideknit.
I can't find the link to it on their site though, but maybe it's still floating around somewhere. It does exactly what you want.

some one posted something about that on an old cg forum can't seem to find it.

http://cghub.com/scripts/download/79

Oooh, flatten to the UV's, I believe TexTools has that feature.

Thanks you guys!
GeeDave - I tried that I was unable to morph it back to it's original shape.

Originally Posted by devingeesr

Thanks you guys!
GeeDave - I tried that I was unable to morph it back to it's original shape.

Hmmm I think it allows you to swap back too.. That's odd. The arrows on the tooltip in TexTools go from UV -> 3D, and also from 3D -> UV.

That would require to split the original mesh along its uv seams. If you don't have the exact same point count/organization between the 3d and the flat model, it will never morph.

I'm currently following this tutorial and I"m not sure how he unfolds the model.
www.squirrelyjones.com/public/model.pdf

well slideknit does it anyway. Maybe he just relaxed the mesh, but the man's on polycount, so i guess you could ask him.

I just PM him i sent him a email before i started the thread but wanted to see if any body else had any ideas on it.

thank sooooooo much for that plugin that was exactly what i was looking for!

http://simont.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=236

I tried that and for some reason it didn't work.

Hi polycounters

We haven't updated SlideKnit (or SlideNormalThief for that matter) in a little while, and yes I'm afraid they are no longer linked from our site after the last redesign. Direct links are :

http://slidelondon.com/_downloads/Sl.../SlideKnit.zip
http://slidelondon.com/_downloads/Sl...ormalThief.rar

We don't have a lot of time to devote to updating these, but if you do run into any problems you're more than welcome to email me and I might be able to help. Our email address is in the SlideKnit readme and tools themselves.

And of course - these were meant for the community so please do feel free to adapt the code, rehost, whatever will benefit everyone best.

Cheers!
Rob

Originally Posted by Kwramm

http://slidelondon.com/ used to offer a plugin called slideknit.
I can't find the link to it on their site though, but maybe it's still floating around somewhere. It does exactly what you want.

Originally Posted by devingeesr

Thanks you guys!
GeeDave - I tried that I was unable to morph it back to it's original shape.

sure you can, there is a morph modifier in the flattened mesh, i use it pretty much on a daily basis right now, it works