Settings and Macros/UVPositioner Description

This UVPositioner macro effectively replaces the standard Texture tool. And the main reason for the replacement is it supports the Alpha channel.

Other new features are:

• You can easily select which image channels should be used as the UV map. There is no need in additional conversion of, let's say, Red and Green to dedicated UV channels using extra ChannelBoolean.
• An interactive "Offset" view control lets you shift the texture on the surface more easily
• Possibility to scale the texture proportionally in both directions
• Possibility to choose whether the texture should be repeated or applied only once
• Supports pixels of the texture image beyond the frame

Node Inputs

• UVMap

  An image with texture coordinates. Required.

  Texture

  GRBA image which is to be placed on a surface or distorted with the UV map. Required.

Controls Tab

• U Channel

  Selects a channel which defines the U coordinate for the texture.

  V Channel

  Selects a channel which defines the V coordinate for the texture.

  Flip U

  Inverts the U coordinates of the map.

  Flip V

  Inverts the V coordinates of the map.

  Offset

  Shifts the texture in surface coordinates.

  Horizontal Repeats

  Scales the texture in U direction.

  Vertical Repeats

  Scales the texture in V direction.

  Combined Repeats

  Scales the texture proportionally.

  Tiling

  Defines the way the surface gets textured outside of the texture borders when the latest is scaled down. Transparent means the texture is applied only once and the rest of the surface remains black. Extend means the border colors of the texture get stretched over the surface. Tile repeats the texture.

  Pre-Divide UV by Alpha

  Cleans artifacts at the edge of the objects. Edges of anti-aliased UV maps smoothly fade to black and because of that the edges get different (decreased) coordinates, so the texture gets distorted on them. This parameter solves the issue by restoring the coordinates at the edges.

  Post-Multiply RGB by Alpha

  Once you apply the previous parameter to get rid of the texture distortion at the edges, they become sharp. To restore smoothness, switch Post-Multiply RGB by Alpha on. Now the edges smoothly fade to black again but without the texture distortion. This parameter should be turned off if you combine the resulting texture with other pre-divided layers for the same object. In this case you post-multiply the complete result of the layer combination in the end.

  Correct Folds

  Smooths the edges, where one parts of the object overlap the others. Those edges usually get artifacts because in an anti-aliased UV map there is a smooth blend between the foreground and background UV, so the texturing tool squeezes large part of the texture into them.

  Folds Threshold

  Defines how big should be the distance between the foreground and background surface to apply the correction to the edge.

  Folds Width

  Adjusts the width of the internal edges which are to be corrected. This parameter depends on the filtering of the incoming UV map. A greater Width should be set for smoother maps.

• Tips

• Use 32 bit float point images as UV maps to get better quality.
• If you want to rotate the texture 90 deg counter-clockwise, just swap the UV-channels and check Flip Vertically.
• To rotate 90 deg clockwise, swap the UV-channels and check the Flip Horizontally.
• To rotate 180 deg, check both the Flip Vertically and Flip Horizontally.

Download UVPositioner_v04-3

Development History and Discussion on PigsFly

To install the macro, place the downloaded UVPositioner_v04-3.setting file to your Fusion:\Macros folder.
Then you can insert it to the Flow either choosing from the main menu: Tools>Macro or by pressing Ctrl+Space and typing the tool name.

Gregory Chalenko