It all started with set 367. Modeling and reading technical drawings at the age of five. He loved Lego. By the age of seven he was doing the technic boxes meant for twelve year olds. Thinking he was so smart he later enrolled in university to become an aerospace engineer. He was headed for a bright and promising future. Unfortunately at the faculty they gave him access to a CAD system where he learned 3d modeling. And he liked it.

To get his daily 3d fix he went to the school of Art, Media and Technology. There he joined up with fellow students and produced a demo game. This landed him his first job in the games industry in 1995.

Over the years Stefan has worked for several games and animation studios. He is said to be responsible for ruining the childhood of many children by designing the most annoying cat in Dutch history: Redcat. He has modeled a low poly version of David Hasselhoff’s perm and got his approval for it. He joined Rare Ltd and dared to eat his steak Medium there. He ate duck feet with the guys from Bungie. He finished first in this year’s great race to Großarl. He seems to respond better to Wamba than his real name. His real name contains 29 letters, not 11.

Skill Set

Modeling, texturing, rigging, rendering, scripting, creating workarounds, getting stuff to work, optimizing the production pipeline and emitting positive karma on machines.

Current version: 1.1 (14 Sep 2008)

installation

You can download the script here: sdv_autoMapping.zip

Windows | Maya 2008

• Locate your Maya settings directory: My Documents\maya\2008\prefs\
• Open the downloaded zip file.
• Copy the *.mel files to the subdirectory: scripts\
• Copy the *.bmp files to the subdirectory: icons\
• Then restart Maya or enter rehash in the Script Editor.

usage

Select a polygon object or select polygon faces and then enter this command in the Script Editor: sdv_autoMapping

changelog

v1.1     14 Sep 2008     Added support for multiple objects. Reduced the flickering in the uv window, while it is busy mapping uvs.
v1.0     07 Mar 2007 First version.

I wrote this script because I found Maya’s default workflow for creating creases a bit tedious. With this script you can directly enter a value. You can quickly apply the same value to other components. Interactive editing is still available with the slider. The window and slider can be resized. It supports creasing of polygon edges and vertices.

Current version: 1.0 (21 Aug 2008)

installation

You can download the script here: sdv_creaseSlider.zip

Windows | Maya 2008

• Locate your Maya settings directory: My Documents\maya\2008\prefs\
• Open the downloaded zip file.
• Copy the *.mel files to the subdirectory: scripts\
• Copy the *.bmp files to the subdirectory: icons\
• Then restart Maya or enter rehash in the Script Editor.

usage

1. Enter the following command in the Script Editor: sdv_creaseSlider
2. Create a polygon object and enable Smooth Mesh (press 3).
3. Select an edge or vertex.
4. In the CreaseSlider window drag the slider or enter a value.

Note: Currently this script supports only one object at a time.

Move

This was the main reason for creating this script. I needed a method of quickly giving UVs an offset of 1. This is useful for temporarily moving UVs out of the way or for moving overlapping UVs out of the 0-1 range. Overlapping UVs can result in artifacts when baking textures (shadow maps, occlusion, 3d textures, normal maps). By moving them out of the 0-1 range they are not used by the baking process. With an offset of exactly 1 the textures on the UVs appear unchanged.

Calc: UV Difference – This function can be found in the popup menu to the right. It measures the distance between two UVs for the U and V value.

Change Precision – This changes the number of decimals on the text fields. It only affects the display. The internal calculations use a 15 digit precision.

Rotate

This rotate tool has a bunch of presets in the popup menu and you can specify a custom pivot position.

Quick Presets – These 8 buttons perform the rotate instantly. The presets found in the popup menu to the far right only copy their value to the text field and do not perform the rotate.

Calc: UV Angle – This utility can be found in the popup menu and calculates the angle between two UVs. This can be used for straightening out rotated parts.

Set Pivot – Here you can specify a custom pivot point. By default the UVs rotate around their center point. The popup menu contains presets and functions.

Scale

The scale tool is very similar to the rotate tool. It has presets in the popup, it has quick presets and you can specify a custom pivot position.

Mirror U / V – This mirrors UVs with the option to specify a pivot point. By default it mirrors around its center.

Divide Values (1 / Value) – This seemingly obscure functionality can be found in the upper popup menu. With this you can rescale something back to its original size. For instance 400% becomes 25%. It can also be used to obtain fractions. For instance if you divide 16 it becomes 1/16, which is 0.0625.

Extras

I have collected some of my other UV editing scripts and put them in here. If you right click on the buttons you can copy them to your shelf.

Orient Shells – This function tries to straighten the orientation of your selected UV shells. It treats each shell separately. The straightening is done by looking at the bounding box size of a shell. With most shapes this seems to work. This script works faster if you select less UVs per shell. This is noticeable with high UV counts (10k+). Ideally you only need to select one UV per shell.

Orient Single – This orients a single UV shell. It skips the shell definition pass which can be time consuming on high polygon objects. Recommended if you only want to orient a few shells that have a lot of UVs.

Stack Shells – This puts UV shells exactly on top of each other.

Center UVs – This moves the selected UVs as a whole to the center (0.5, 0.5).

Align UV Shells – This aligns UV shells to each other.
Just like with Orient Shells you will get a faster performance if you select less UVs per shell.

Flatten UVs – This flattens UVs to their minimum, maximum or center.

Installation

You can download this script here or get it from Creative Crash.

Windows | Maya 2008

Copy the scripts (.mel) from the zip to this directory:
My Documents/maya/2008/scripts/

Copy the icons (.bmp) to this directory:
My Documents/maya/2008/prefs/icons/

Then restart Maya or type rehash in the script editor.

Usage

To run this script enter the following command in the script editor: sdv_xformUV

If you wish to install a button on your current shelf then enter the following command:
sdv_shelfButton("sdv_xformUV", "sdv_xformUV", "sdv_xformUV.bmp")

Version History

v2.7 – 03 Nov 2008 – Added Center, Flatten and Orient.
v2.6 – Added Align UV Shells.
v2.5 – Added Stack UV Shells. Created a more streamlined UI.
v1.0 – 07 Jan 2000 – Created the move section.

Current version: 1.0 (22 Jun 2008)
Note: This is script is now also included in the xformUV editor.

installation

You can download the script here: sdv_alignUvShells.zip

Windows | Maya 2008

• Locate your Maya settings directory: My Documents\maya\2008\prefs\
• Open the downloaded zip file.
• Copy the *.mel files to the subdirectory: scripts\
• Copy the *.bmp files to the subdirectory: icons\
• Then restart Maya or enter rehash in the Script Editor.

usage

Enter the following code in the Script Editor: sdv_alignUvShells(0)
With the window now open select your UV shells and click on one of the align buttons.

Tip:
There is no need to select all UVs from the shells. The script will actually run faster if you select less UVs per shell. Ideally you only need to select one UV per shell. With high UV counts you will notice the difference.

Commands:
sdv_alignUvShells(0)
This opens the main window.

sdv_alignUvShells(-1)
This installs the main program’s icon on your current shelf.

sdv_alignUvShells(-2)
This installs the six align icons on your shelf.

Current version: 1.1.0, 22 Jun 2008.
Note: This is script is now also included in the xformUV editor.

usage

Select uvs and enter this in the script editor: sdv_orientUvShells

TIP: The shell definition pass works faster if you select less uvs per shell. This is mainly an issue with very high uv counts (10k+). Ideally you only need to select one uv per shell.

changelog

current version: 1.1.0
created: 22 Jun 2008
updated: 29 Sep 2008

Download the script here: sdv_orientUvShells.zip

Current version: 1.0 (6 Aug 2001)

installation

You can download the script here: sdv_numMove.zip

Installation (Maya 2008  |  Windows)
• Copy the scripts (.mel) from the zip to this directory:
My Documents/maya/2008/scripts/
• Copy the icons (.bmp) to this directory:
My Documents/maya/2008/prefs/icons/
• Then restart Maya or type rehash in the script editor.

To run the script enter the following in the script editor: sdv_numMove

Having a weird name is fun when you are still a child. Later it just becomes tiresome. Having to spell the name over the phone, people calling you by the wrong name, receiving mail with malformed names, getting passes with truncated names.

I decided a while ago to leave out the last part. Just to make life a bit easier. It is not official, so I am still stuck with it on official paperwork. Luckily most of the official things are handled through the internet nowadays.

As expected there is quite some history behind the name. Here is my version of it.

The Franquemont name dates back to the thirteenth century. There used to be a Franquemont castle on the border between Switzerland and France. It was destroyed simply because people kept fighting over it. Then there was this Duke who came up with the great idea of creating a regiment lead by his offspring. It resulted in five sons that all became high ranked officers. One of them later joined Napoleon to receive some whoopass at Waterloo in 1815. The regiment was hired by the Dutch East India Company and was deployed at the East Indies (Indonesia). At least one of them got friendly with the locals. The name David was added somewhere along the line. When Indonesia broke free from its Dutch rule in 1949 all foreigners were kicked out and sent back to the Netherlands. This included people with weird names like David von Franquemont.

More information about Franquemont is posted on wikipedia.