Project Overview
the problem
UV editing in Maya for a long time was something of a tedious and difficult chore. The tools were not very user friendly and were quite lacking in features that users needed. It was so bad that most UV editing for 3d meshes would not actually be done in Maya and many users would turn to 3rd party tools or plugins to add functionality that was lacking in Maya.
the solution
The modeling team for Maya were tasked with redesigning the UV Editor to make it easier for users to create and optimize UV layouts for their models. The goal was to minimize the number of actions a user had to take to get a good result and update the tools to get better results, such as the unfold and optimization tools as well as the auto layout tool.
my role
As the designer for the new UV editor, I designed new tools, features, workflows and updated the layout of the editor itself. Features such as the unfold and optimize brushes, cut and sew brushes, UV optimization shading, a new unfold and optimization algorithm and improved display and performance for dense meshes with high cv counts and multiple UDIM tiles.
UV Editor Redesign
The original UV toolbar.
Photoshop mockup of proposed new tools and features.
UI mockup for a proposed UV editor workspace with an emphasis on simplicity and minimalism. This was ultimately deigned too far removed from the overall Maya design ethos but served a launch point for the UV editing workspace designs that followed.
Photoshop mockup of a more advanced UV editing workspace proposal. The idea was to give users a dedicated workspace for UV editing where all the necessary tools and workflows are presented in one area.
The intent was to allow users to work on UV editing without the need to switch context between the 2D UV editing window and the main Maya 3D viewport.
