UV Group Utility (UVGroupUtil) is a work-in-progress plugin for Maya that extends the functionality of the built-in UV editor. It adds an UV Outliner window, that lists all UV shells on every mesh in the scene and works similar to Maya’s built-in outliner. It allows the user to create and manage groups and to assign UV shells to them. It has functionality to layout groups individually, or globally so that shells assigned to them stay together.
Having started out for the final project for my Technical Art class, it has grown into something that I’m planning to develop further as it has a lot of potential.
I was working on the Caravan, which, due to the complex nature of the model, has a very convoluted UV layout. During the texturing process I had to painstakingly find and select each individual UV shell for the roof tiles, and wished that there was a tool that allowed me to group the shells. I now have created a tool that does exactly that.
The outliner updates dynamically with each mesh creation, deletion, and UV shell operation, such as cuts or merges. It even supports more complex topology changes for live updates.
Shells can be grouped using the “Group selection” button, and the groups can be stacked.
Everything can be reordered using drag and drop operations, using the icons and handles. There are additional functions for convenience, like “Unparent” or “Delete”.
All group data saves with the Maya scene and gets loaded upon opening the scene.
Stay tuned for future updates, as I’m planning to add a couple more features and do a lot of optimization!