I was blown away when I saw this. As detailed in the video above from Siggraph 2013 Asia, the developers demonstrate how simple sweeps can create 3d objects very quickly and easily. The resulting 3d objects also retain the original texture. I wouldn’t be surprised if google buys this software!

Full story on Wired Magazine.

There is an amazing helper software for texturing called Crazy Bump. I’m planning to put it to good use. All you have to do is supply a texture, and it automatically generates the bump, displacement, normal, etc maps for you. The are a many options to customize how much of each you want – really fantastic. I highly recommend it. The website has a good introductory tutorial on how it works.

While in my advanced texture and lighting class during this summer, I came across an amazing UV unwrapping program called UV Layout by Headus. Unlike Maya, which has limited tools for doing UVs, not to mention the time it takes, UV Layout is fast, and far easier. It can read OBJ files and saves the UV maps into a new file or the existing one. You can then use Maya to transfer the UVs:

1. Select the imported object with new UV maps
2. Shift select the destination object in the maya to copy to.
3. Set the Menu to Polygons
4. Select Mesh
5. Select Copy Transfer Attributes
6. Select UV Maps to transfer
7. Apply

The Headus website has very good video tutorials as well.