@theoutside the email bounced back saying “tech@mcneel: Host or domain name not found. Name service error for
name=mcneel type=A: Host not found”
Ah, I see now, the email address you posted didn’t have the .com and I just blindly copied and pasted it. I just resent it.
got it- Sitting on the relevant devs desk atm… Will update via email when I have an answer.
Thank you! And any suggestions you have on how best to do what I’m trying to do would be appreciated.
You have to Unwrap again with the top view active, and then realign the island with the image by drawing curves and using constraints or just scaling.
@BrianJ Thanks, that appears to fix the problem. I have not redrawn the curves and added the constraints yet but I can tell the image is mapped in the correct orientation.
So, is it a requirement to be in the Top view when one Unwraps?
And, while I have your attention, if I draw Curves for the fish outline in Rhino, can these be dragged into the UV Editor window? I have not been able to get that to work, I can only draw them directly in the UV Editor window.
Hi @mhackney, with the UV Editor open on one side and a top view on the other, select the curve(s) in top view, use Gumball, start dragging in the direction of the UV Editor, tap ALT so you see the symbol that you copy, drag over UV Editor and release. Now zoom way out until you see your curves in UV Editor and scale them so they fit into the unitsquare.
@BrianJ, this should be easier to discover, eg. Copy & Paste
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@clement I’ve tried your procedure to the letter and it doesn’t work - this is on Rhino 8 Mac. Maybe it is a Mac bug? I can hold down the option key (the Mac key for ALT) and I see the copy symbol. I drag over the UV Editor window and wait hovering but nothing changes. When I let go, no curves appear in the window (but I do see the copies created in the modeling window). I’ve tried multiple times with zoomed out top views, zoomed out UV Editor, etc but nothing works. I’ll try it on Windows tomorrow.
Hi @mhackney, i’ve only seen and tested this on Windows. It’s not documented yet.
Edit: i can confirm this does not work on Mac (R8 SR5) yet.
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This was presented in the video from a couple of weeks ago so I’ve tried this a few times - but not in Top view, I’m usually in Perspective view. So I was hopeful that maybe the view made the difference!
That’s where i’ve seen it too in @BrianJ 's video.
btw. my 2ct for the whole process. I don’t think you have to go through the hassle of using the UV Editor and unwrapping the geometry, then aligning the UV Island to that image (which must be a square for this to work) using curves…
Your image is a planar projection which you’ve used as a trace image to draw the geometry. Apply a planar mapping to your geometry in top view, when it asks for the corners of the planar mapping, just snap to your picture (frame) lower left and upper right corners and you should get a perfect alignment of the mapping to the picture once it is used for texturing or displacement.
The displacement of the SubD does not work because it has naked edges between each of the SubD faces as you’ve discovered.
You might solve this either by extracting the render mesh (_ExtractRenderMesh) from the SubD and _Weld it with 180 degrees then displace it. Alternatively, convert the SubD to Nurbs (_ToNurbs), mesh it with the desired density, _Weld and then displace it. (I guess you’ve figured this out already).
Since your image is not a height map having usable depth information (just color picture), i wouldn’t expect much from the displacement. All you get are some dents where the trout has spots because it moved the mesh using black and white values in the image. I doubt that the trout has dents at those spots 
trout_textured.3dm (486.3 KB)
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@clement, thanks for the suggestions, I’ll give it a try. Yeah, the image is just used to add a little texture for visual appeal. The black dots are not dents on the fish but they do trick the eye on a piece of milled wood! I’ve done some of these and added these little features by hand one at a time. That was a pain, which is why I was interested in trying this.
@mhackney, i see. Here’s that last one with a displacement test:
trout_displaced.3dm (279.3 KB)
Since it’s for production, you might first create a valid solid, i’ve just build the test surface using _Loft with history and 3 curves, then tweaked a bit using point editiing…
You could use a planar projection for the SubD version too.
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@clement thank you for pointing out the planar projection approach. I really did not understand the different mapping types but now I do and the pros and cons to each for this type of work. In practice, the forms I’ll be texturing will not have such steep sides - those are difficult to machine - so the “wrapping” effect using the planar projection won’t be so pronounced. I can also edit the photo to stretch or reduce the detail in these areas if it is a problem. The only thing missing is Blender (or Aspire)'s ability to paint on features. Although that would be useful, I can probably work around it and worse case, use Blender to do that work.
I’d also like to say, that Rhino 8 on an M2 Mac screams in the rendering department! I run Rhino on an Intel Mac, anIntel Windows 11 (with a big GPU) and an M2 MacBook Air and the MacBook Air is by far the fastest renderer. It really is impressive to use them side by side.
@mhackney, probably you can get the most out of this if you use the color texture as a base to create a new displacement texture in Photoshop. Then remove some of the details near the silhouette and add grooves etc using a white brush with a slight falloff to prevent hard height changes. (Black will not move, white moves in the direction of normal, which you could inverse if required). Or do the sculpting by hand in Blender.
Yes, i’m impressed what my old M1 now can do in Rendered viewport too!
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Great idea, I’ve been working on it this morning. My first attempt used the blue channel as it had the highest contrast, increased the dpi and gausian blurred. It made a big difference but also hilighted how much texture there is on the large surfaces. I think using a lower contrast color channel and reducing the contrast even more, popping the white to highlight what’s called the lateral line down the side of the fish, should give much better results.
Just for those who are interested, here are the red (low contrast) and blue (high contrast) channels. Each was scaled from 72ppi to 120ppi, then curves applied to lower contrast by moving black to grey and white to light grey (an S curve), then applying a Gaussian blur to smooth things out, convert the image to Greyscale and then save the file as a png.
I generally Unwrap in the Top or Perspective view. Perhaps the view that was active for you contributed to this issue. I will investigate more and report what I find to the developers. Thanks.
Unfortunately, drag and drop of curves into the UV editor is not working on Mac. I have filed this issue and am hoping for a fix soon. RH-80643 for future reference.
@clement , Yes I totally agree it should be easier. It’s filed as RH-79010 already and I’m hoping the devs can make Copy and paste work in the UV editor soon. In the meantime, it looks like the only sure way to get curves in on both Mac and PC is to draw them there directly. Sorry.
I work in primarily the Perspective view and that would have been where I originally did the unwrap. Now that I understand the limitations (UV editor drag and drop, use top view, etc) I am able to make progress. Thanks!
@mhackney Hi, for some reason the mapping got set upside down. I’ve got steps how to get that fixed easily.
Turning off displacement temporarily makes things work snappier.
RH-80743 Unwrapped SubD with displacement slow to select
Here’s a video clip too: RH-80732-Trout-UV.mp4 - Google Drive
Thank you Jussi, when/if it happens again I’ll try this. Brian’s solution of deleting and starting over solved the problem for this case.
I did learn a couple of little tricks from your video too! thanks
