Review of Right Hemisphere's Deep UV

Deep UV is a program to make the chore of creating and modifying UV maps for polygonal models easier and simpler. It can be used as a standalone or accessed from Deep Paint 3D version 2 and Deep Mesh. It has tools both for the beginner and advanced user. It has the ability to combine many materials on to one large bitmap for ease and speed in loading; it integrates with 3d studio max® and Maya® through plugins, as well as has many other features which will be discussed in this review.

The system requirements vary between the manual and the products sheet on the web. I will combine them using those from the product sheet as the standard and giving those from the manual, if greater, in parentheses. The ones from the manual are, for the most part, lower. Contained on the CD is a manual of about 80 pages which can be printed or used as a pdf on line.

  • Windows 98/ME or Windows NT 4.0/2000/XP
  • A minimum resolution of 800 x 600 (1024 x 768)
  • A graphics card capable of displaying 16-bit color
  • At least 128 MB or RAM
  • A Pentium III 400 processor or better
  • A CD-ROM drive for installation

Recommendations are:

  • Windows 2000/XP
  • A graphics card capable of displaying 32-bit color
  • At least 256 MB of RAM
  • A Pentium III 600 processor or better

The cost of Deep UV is US $795 + shipping for a full version and for an upgrade from Deep Paint 3D with Texture Weapons to Deep Paint Paint 3D v2 and Deep UV, US $395 + shipping. The cost for a Deep Paint 3D upgrade to Deep Paint Paint 3D v2 and Deep UV is US $795 + shipping.

Licenses for Deep Paint 3D can be purchased individually, included in the price of the software, or purchased for more than one machine. If one just buys a program, then one can only run it on one machine at a time. However, licensing and unlicensing it are not hard too do. The initial licensing seemed to work much faster than it did previously. I was licensed immediately. However, if it fails to license or unlicense, one has to contact support@elicense.com and fill out a long form. This can be a headache. Because it fails to license or unlicense does not mean that their is a problem with the program. It can be a glitch that elicense systems has to rectify. This happened to me when I was unlicensing Deep UV to move it to my other machine. After I filled out the form, they requested a text receipt. I had no idea what they wanted so after e-mailing them and waiting, I finally called them. A form is generated when the program is installed called "receipt.txt." It is placed in the main window of the program. Had I known that, the process might have been completed in under a few hours. Just a helpful hint should the situation arise.

Very often pictures say a lot more than words. This program follows this maxim. I have worked a small amount with UV meshes and to be honest do not enjoy the tedium of it. This program takes the tedium out of UV mapping by all of its automatic controls. However, it also has manual controls for fine tuning. On the Right Hemisphere website are two tutorials. These tutorials can be used or just perused to get an idea of some of the capabilities of the program. Also, a trial version of Deep UV can be downloaded. I am always impressed when a company has a product that can be downloaded and tested.

The following is just an example of how in one step a UV map can be grossly manipulated in preparation for fine tuning. This occurred through the touch of one button. The relaxing can also be watched in real-time.

Initial UV Map
Map Relaxed

Deep UV has the tools to 1) automatically map a 3D object that does not have a map and 2) refine an existing UV map. One can initially position a 3D figure and through lighting and tiling set it up so that it is visually apparent whether it is mapped well or not. One can compare the irregularity of the mapping of the octopus and the more regular mapping of the head. This does not mean that there might not be work that needs to be done on the head, but in the gross sense, the tiles show the object and its parts where the work is needed the most.

I always feel that to someone in the field, the available tools give a good indication of the strength of a program. Thus I have created screen shots of the tools. I have left out the Objects Tab because it was not pertinent to this discussion.

Mapping
Materials
Lights

As a note. The Preserve Bitmap command (see above) allows for changes in the UV mapping after the object has been textured without altering the original bitmap.

A number of commands are also accomplished using the right mouse button as well as from the pull down tool bar menus. For example, while the relax command can be found under tools on the right hand Command Panel, right next to it is an Advanced Relax Button. This button can be used to refine small areas. Basically, tweaking and moving polygon by polygon and/or point by point once one becomes familiar with the commands is incredibly easy and controllable.

A few of the product's features not illustrated in this review are:

  • Support of OpenGL allowing for large models to be used
  • Box Mapping
  • Grow selection and grow soft selection
  • Numerous selection tools so irregular selections of different types can be made
  • Direct integration with 3ds max, Maya workflow for XSI and Lightwave
  • Separation of upper and lower UV coordinates through the "Lift" function
  • Ability to easily apply different mapping types to different parts of an object
  • Easy zoom and pan navigational ability
  • Advanced 3D selection set features. Ability to select surface area of an object by angle deflection from selected faces

For more information go to the Right Hemisphere website at http://www.righthemisphere.com.

The following information appeared in Deep UV from a head exported from Poser Pro Pack as a 3ds file. I am showing it because I thought the amount of information present was interesting because of the potential of how it could be used in Deep UV. Firstly, notice how the original image has a closed mouth even though teeth are listed under materials. Notice in the Front View that the teeth are showing.

Perspective
Right Click
Command Panel
Front View

I hope this review has given an idea of the breadth of this program. A demo can be downloaded from the Right Hemisphere website.