Hi everyone. 

Well, I've officially moved back from my temporary 2 month stay in Boston.  The summer there was phenomenal.  I would get weekly emails from my friends and family back in Austin complaining about the ungodly hot 100+ degree weather and then I’d walk outside in Boston to a perfect sunny and 75-80 degree day.  Unfortunately I got back just in time for another heat wave in Austin - up to 105 today :(  But I’d rather have only a few weeks of that than 2-3 months of it!  So next summer we’re planning on getting the heck out of here again… but this time somewhere in the Pacific North West.  Where should we go?  Seattle?  Portland?  Vancouver?

Speaking of Vancouver… I just spent 4 days there last week visiting several game developers including Capcom (formerly Blue Castle), United Front and Piranha games.  I spent the better part of a full day last Wed with the guys at United Front showing them some Maya goodness.  They are finishing up a project that I’m really looking forward to -> Little Big Planet Karting

My daughter, who is almost 7, is finally starting to show an interest in games.  Yea!!  I finally have someone to play with :)  I recently started playing the original Little Big Planet with her and she is loving it.  It’s such a fun game and a great franchise.  Karting looks super fun as well. 

So on to the topic of the week… UV Editing.  We all love working with UVs right?  Wrong… we all hate working with UVs.  But just like skinning and weighting, it’s just one of those necessary evils… so tedious and monotonous.  But a few of us here have created some nifty little BonusTools that at least help with the process.  I’ve put together a few movies that demonstrate some these tools.

Auto Unwrap UVs

Auto Map Multiple Meshes

Align UV Shells

Clamp UVs

Flip / Rotate UVs

UV Editor Display