8

896 Chapter 8: Modifiers
• Relax By Centers—The original Relax method
from previous versions of 3ds Max. It relaxes
vertices based off the centroids (centers of
mass) of their f aces. It does not take into
account the face or edge shapes/angles so it is
mainly useful for removing overlap or for faces
that are mostly rectangular.
Iterations—The number of times the Relax settings
are applied when you click Apply. E ach iteration is
applied successively, to t he results of the previous
iteration. Range=0 to 100000. Default=100.
Amount—The strength of the relaxat ion applied
per iteration. Range=0.0 to 1.0. Default=0.1.
Stretch—Theamountofstretchingthatcan
occur. Stretching is useful mainly to resolve
overlapping texture vertices, at t he cost of
reint roducing distort ion into the texture mesh.
Range=0.0 to 1.0. Default=0.0.
—
Keep Boundary Points Fixed—
Controls whether
vertices at the outer edges of the texture
coordinates are moved. D efault=off.
When off, the outer edge of the texture mesh
can float, allowing a wider range of the available
texture-mapping space to be used. Typically
you would keep this off when relaxing an entire
element or cluster, so the software can minimize
distortion by moving the edges.
When relaxing an interior subset of vertices, it
is recommended you turn this on to prevent the
selected vertices f rom overlapping unselected
vertices. For Relax By Edge and Face Angles, turn
this off until you get a good solution for the outer
boundaries of the mesh and then turn it on to
resolve the interior sections.
Save Outer Corners—Preserves the original
positions of texture vertices far t hest away from the
center. Available only with the Relax By Centers
method.
Apply —Begins the relaxation process using the
current settings. As relaxation takes place, a
textual progress indicator appears at the bottom of
the dialog , showing the current iteration (Process
frame) and the total number of iterations being
processed.
To abort the relaxation process, press ESC. You can
thenuseUndo(CTRL+Z)toreturntotheprior
state, if necessary.
Set As Default—Savesallcurrentsettingsasthe
Relax defaults, so they are recalled from session
to session.
Render UV s Dialog
Unwrap UVW modifier > Edit button (on Parameters
rollout) > Tools menu > Render UVW Template
The Render UVs dialog, part of the Unwrap UVW
editor (page 1–878)
,letsyouexportamodel’s
texture mapping data as a template; a bitmapped
image file. you can then import this template into
a 2D paint program, apply color as needed, and
thenbringitbackinto3dsMaxasatexturemapto
applytothemodel.Theexportedfilelookslikea
screen shot of the editor window, but without any
background texture, and has the added options of
setting color and alpha options for both the edges
and the area they cover.
For a procedure that covers usage of this dialog, see
To export texture coordinates to a paint program:
(page 1–872)
.