Swim Merlin Swim! is featuring the PSD Magazine cover! (Issue 2/2008)

That magazine is published in USA and Australia, so if you are around pick up one, it have interesting articles (like the almighty Patrick Beaulieu’s amazing Fear of the Dark image details, and CHEVisodes).

On the other side, FINALLY! Swim Merlin Swim’s Making Of see the light! a few screenshots, and more videos than text! ..I tried to make it less boring possible

Take a look of this article here:
www.venomgfx.com.ar/makingof/sms

The 2.46 version of Blender is about to see the light, and one of the greatest changes in this version is the merge of the “UV Mode” with the “Edit Mode”. It’s an old change (months ago) so the can’t-wait people should know it and even get used to it, but for those who doesn’t follow the Blender development in SVN or use only official releases might not be familiarized with this change, that’s why I’m writing this. I hope to not forget anything.

Things you should know about the new UV/Edit Mode…

First of all, there is no “UV Face Mode” anymore, now the “UV Mode” is merged into the “Edit Mode”.
You can find the old “Face Mode” as “Painting Mask” button in the painting modes, like VertexPaint, TexturePaint, WeightPainting mode. It works like a mask to paint only in the selected faces.

· UV Layers:
Our meshes doesn’t have an UV layer by default anymore, it’s automatically created when you unwrap or assign an image to the object, however you can manually create images in the Mesh panel in Edit Buttons.

· Unwrap: The Unwrap menu is now in the “U” key in “Edit Mode” .

· Seams: Before this change you were able to select verts inside Seams in Face Mode, now since we are in Edit Mode you can do this in “Face Select Mode”, with “L” key, like it was before.

· Game Engine User:
What happened to the “Specials” menu (W) that it was in Face Mode?, don’t worry! it’s a little bit hidden, but it is there. Just go into any painting mode (Vertex, Texture, Weight), press “F”, and then “W” to see the Specials menu again.
The Texture Face panel is still in Edit Buttons, but you’ll have to select the faces in Face Select Mode.

So.. what’s new then?

Many changes, yes, but before you start complaining about these changes, let’s see what’s new.

One of the greatest benefits is the new “Sync UV and Mesh Selection” system!, now we can select verts/edges/faces in the 3D view and they will be selected in the UV editor, and vice-versa!, so now you can select even loops and they’ll be selected in both windows, thing that you couldn’t do before. But, one negative point in this new Sync Mesh system, is that you can’t hide verts in the UV editor while using it, so if you have a character with many verts/faces and you want to use SyncMesh but only see a part of the whole UV, you can’t you will see the *whole* UV and it’s a little bit annoying to work like that, but you can always use the old mode to hide verts with “H”, without the benefits of Sync Mesh.

Another nice addition in the UV editor is the 2D Cursor, very useful to use as pivot or reference, with its own Snap To menu like in the 3D view! (shortcut is Shift + S too). You can also manually set a position for this 2D cursor in the View Properties panel, in this panel you’ll also see new settings like the Draw Type for the lines in the UV, even a Smooth option is there for seeing the things clear. Also the new “Repeat Image” option is in that panel.

Now the selection modes (Ctrl + Tab, Vertice, Edges, Faces) and Snap (Shift + G) are available in the UV Editor too, and linked to the 3D view.
I think I didn’t forget any important points in this new system, if you see something wrong or something you’d like to add just drop a comment or contact me.
Hope this helps you!
venomgfx