UV Cartographer

Purpose

Creates non-destructive duplicate meshes with generated UV channels and optional RG-packed flow-field textures for feature-aware UV, NPR mark direction, trimsheet, and lightmap handoff workflows.

Menu path

• Tools/EQLabs/Creation/Modeling/UV Cartographer

Current Scope

• Selection-driven mesh source assignment.
• Profile assets for mode, target channel, projection padding, NPR direction, and flow-field export settings.
• Duplicate mesh generation under Assets/EQLabs/Generated/Create_AnimationModeling/UvCartographer/Meshes.
• Flow-field PNG export under Assets/EQLabs/Generated/Create_AnimationModeling/UvCartographer/Textures.
• Feature detection for boundary edges, hard edges, material/submesh borders, and existing UV seam candidates.
• Scene view feature preview with color-coded feature edges and a raised summary label.
• Scene view Pick Mode for adding/removing manual feature edges.
• Scene view Stroke Mode for recording a preferred flow direction.
• Dedicated UV Cartographer Scene view EditorTool for feature picking and stroke recording.
• Chain simplification that merges adjacent detected feature edges into longer marked chains.
• Feature set assets under the EQLabs Create_AnimationModeling preset folder.
• Feature-chain-aware projection basis in the editor solver API.
• Starter NPR/profile assets for Hatching, Brush Flow, Manga Tone, Wood Grain, and Cloth Weave.
• Feature-chain-aware and stroke-aware flow-field orientation when detected, saved, or recorded feature direction data is present.
• Clean-room Penner-style cotangent solver with fixed-boundary constraints, projection fallback, and per mesh/profile/feature solve cache.
• Multi-mesh object batch generation from MeshFilter and SkinnedMeshRenderer children.
• Optional UDIM tile offset output for generated UV channels.
• Shader Graph Custom Function handoff include at Assets/EQLabs/Shaders/Create_AnimationModeling/UvCartographer/UVCartographerFlowField.hlsl.
• Flow preview shader and generated sample-material utility.
• Automatic JSON result reports under Assets/EQLabs/Generated/Create_AnimationModeling/Reports/UvCartographer.
• Lightmap mode that routes to Unity UV2/channel 1 generation.
• Result metrics for target channel, distortion, seam candidates, feature alignment, generated mesh path, and flow texture path.

How to Use

1. Open Tools > EQLabs > Creation > Modeling > UV Cartographer.
2. Select a mesh asset or a scene object with a MeshFilter or SkinnedMeshRenderer.
3. Click Use Selected Mesh, or assign a source mesh manually.
4. In Feature Detection, choose the hard-edge angle and enabled feature categories.
5. Click Detect Features to build feature candidates and show the Scene view preview.
6. Enable Pick Mode to manually add or remove feature edges in the Scene view.
7. Left-click an edge to add a manual feature chain.
8. Right-click or Shift-click a nearby edge to remove the matching feature chain.
9. Optionally enable Stroke Mode, then drag in the Scene view to record a flow direction.
10. Optionally click Simplify Chains to merge adjacent detected edges into longer marked chains.
11. Optionally click Save Feature Set to persist the detected, manual, and stroke feature data.
12. Choose a mode and target UV channel.
13. Enable UDIM Tiles when batch output should offset generated UVs into UDIM tile space.
14. Enable Export Flow Field when an NPR or shader workflow needs a direction texture.
15. Click Generate Duplicate for one mesh or Generate Object Batch for all mesh children on the assigned/selected object.
16. Optionally click Create Flow Preview Material to generate a sample material under the EQLabs generated folder.
17. Review the generated mesh, optional flow texture, sample material, and JSON report under the EQLabs generated folder.

Starter Profiles

Use Create Starter Profiles to create five ready-to-edit profile assets:

• Hatching
• Brush Flow
• Manga Tone
• Wood Grain
• Cloth Weave

These profiles enable flow-field export by default and are intended as fast presets for NPR material workflows.

Flow Field Shader Handoff

The exported flow-field PNG stores:

• R/G: signed 2D direction encoded from -1..1 into 0..1.
• B: coverage or validity strength.
• A: opaque mask.

For Shader Graph, add a Custom Function node in File mode:

• File: Assets/EQLabs/Shaders/Create_AnimationModeling/UvCartographer/UVCartographerFlowField.hlsl
• Function examples:
  • UVCartographer_DecodeFlow_float
  • UVCartographer_FlowOffset_float
  • UVCartographer_OrientedCoordinates_float
  • UVCartographer_AnisotropicStripe_float

Sample the flow-field texture in Shader Graph, pass its RGBA output into packedFlow, and use the generated mesh UV channel selected in the UV Cartographer result. The include also provides _half variants for half-precision Shader Graph previews.

The bundled flow preview shader is available at:

• Assets/EQLabs/Shaders/Create_AnimationModeling/UvCartographer/UVCartographerFlowPreview.shader

Use Create Flow Preview Material to generate a material under Assets/EQLabs/Generated/Create_AnimationModeling/UvCartographer/ShaderSamples.

Penner Mode

Penner is a clean-room cotangent-weighted solver path. It fixes open mesh boundary vertices to a feature-aligned projection, relaxes interior vertices with cotangent weights, records solver metadata in the result report, and caches solves by mesh/profile/feature hash. Closed meshes and overly large meshes fall back to the stable feature projection path with a review warning instead of modifying source assets.

Multi-Mesh And UDIM

Generate Object Batch collects MeshFilter and SkinnedMeshRenderer children from the assigned source object or active selection. Each source mesh produces a separate duplicate mesh, optional flow texture, and JSON report under the EQLabs generated folder.

When UDIM Tiles is enabled, generated UVs are offset by tile:

• first mesh: selected start tile, default 1001
• next meshes: increment across UDIM columns, then rows
• lightmap mode ignores UDIM offsets because Unity lightmaps expect normalized UV2 charts

Output Policy

• Source meshes are not modified.
• Generated meshes and textures live under the EQLabs generated Create_AnimationModeling folder.
• Generated JSON reports live under the EQLabs generated report folder.
• Lightmap mode writes Unity UV2/channel 1.
• Flow-field textures are imported as linear, uncompressed, repeat-wrapped textures.
• Shader handoff files are source include files only; generated user outputs still live under the EQLabs generated folder.
• Batch meshes, flow textures, reports, and sample materials are generated under Assets/EQLabs/Generated/Create_AnimationModeling/UvCartographer.