LogInAfter a year of silence and hard work, the RizomUV team has finally shared the news and insights and released RizomUV 2022.
Breaking an almost year-long silence, the RizomUV team is finally sharing why they have been very, very quiet this year: it all started by taking a look at what their users needed as part of the 2021 roadmap planning. The result was a huge amount of time and effort being put into redoing RizomUV’s packaging algorithms. The focus was on UDIMs, now the game industry is starting to use them more and more. The overhaul also showed that other changes needed to be made. Like killing off one of our most popular features. And so, poor, popular AutoFit, was no more.
The team was not sorry to see it go: AutoFit has been replaced by a customizable fitting and scaling toolset, together with nested groups, selection by distortion or texel density, and a slew of other features and improvements making manual and automatic unwrap even more of a snap.
Introducing Scalable Autofit Functionality
The new scaling options replacing Autofit allow you to customize your packing scale and texel density rather than running one-size-fits-all packs. This comes in particularly handy for trim sheets and LOD-type packing, as well as UDIM workflows. It's easy to use, as well: Define your scaling mode and factor and run the pack. In most cases, this is all you need to do.
We have also created options for troubleshooting your pack. If your islands are too small or too big, you can adjust their scale by having Rizom calculate the adjustment of their size based on your texel density settings, taking a lot of the pain out of texel density-based adjustments. We also implemented a function for allowing independent scaling, so you can scale down large islands to scale down with a bigger factor than smaller ones. This is particularly handy for game artists.
Nested Group
With the vast improvements in the packing setups, the Rizom team has also added quality of unwrapping and packing-life to their Grouping functionality.
Frequently asked for by the users, the team has now implemented labeled, renamable and nested groups. To complement this, they worked with the frames surrounding and marking the groups: Frames can now scale group content. Mixed with the improved Locking logic, where you can decide to lock the frame, the islands, or both, you can now customize entire layouts based on how you set up your group frames, single tile or UDIMs.
Select by Texel Density of Distortion
To enhance the new features above, the team also turned their color bar at the bottom of the screen into histograms for the texel density and distortion bars. This means you can now speed up your workflow even more by selecting islands or polygons directly by distortion or texel density. All you have to do is define a range or click a single value. The texel density bar also allows you to customize your workflow: It gets its values by the texel density you define in the layout panel, and you can choose whether you want automatic, manual, or neutral selection settings
Seam Markers
Another new quality of UV mapping life feature is Seam Markers, a line connecting selected edges to their (cut) counterparts for easier navigation and orientation. You can give these a custom color in Preferences if needed. This also goes for the new featurette that's part of this: Natural island boundary colors can now also be colorized, making it easier to see cuts in your geometry on import.
Another new update from the Rizom team is documentation, now you have all the educational and technical stuff in one place.
There are still no current plans to increase RizomUV's pricing, which has remained static since 2017. We are happy with our current model, and it allows us to sponsor students and educational facilities with substantial discounts:
Student licenses still have a permanent 70% discount. Indie pricing starts at a monthly 14.95 Euro, as does the perpetual rent-to-own. Annual licenses are 149 Euros. Node-locked and Floating Pro licenses begin at 34.90 Euro.