How to turn a UV shell to mesh

[Anonymous]

I was wondering if there is a way to create a pole mesh from a UV shell. 
In the attached image, I straightened the UV, and I want to create a mesh from it.

How can I do it in Maya?

[mihirsbcc]

Right click and Select the UV or UV shells Then go to Select, convert selection to Faces. That will select the faces. Fro Edit Mesh Menu Duplicate the faces selected. Unparent, delete history, freeze transform and Center Pivot. You will have a new object.

[Anonymous]

Thanks! but I meant having a mesh that looks exactly like the UV shell, and not like the original model, see attached image.

[mihirsbcc]

So you already have a mesh you want it to flatten like the way your UV looks like. There is a mel or python scripts somewhere. It is called Flatten geometry based on UV script. May be that is what you looking.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Found this plugin:
https://gumroad.com/l/Fztw

[mihirsbcc]

glad that you found it.

[syracoj]

This can be done with Bifrost (a plugin for Maya). My colleague Jason showed me how to extract UVs from a mesh a little while back and after reading this post today I realized that this could be used here. Geometry will be generated for all of the UV shells, but you can delete the geometry that you do not wish to keep.

[The-Digital-Shaman]

https://im3djoe.gumroad.com/l/flattenModelbyUV

[absoluteKelvin]

sorry to piggyback on this thread. the bifrost method sounds good. I gave it a test , but seems like the point order is not the same as original mesh. When I try to do a blendshape, it goes crazy. Is that a bug or I just need another node ?

[mihirsbcc]

I have not experimented with Bifrost. So I can't comment. But I think the
point order is the culprit. Maybe that can be corrected in Bifrot.

[syracoj]

could you zip and upload the scene file?

[absoluteKelvin]

I realized that the point order probably won't be the same since the edges are split and there are more vertices now. I ended up pipeing the construct_mesh into the set_mesh_UVs sampling the coordinates and indices from get_mesh_UVs. Then finally use transfer attributes to get back to the original shape. Unfortunately the envelope slider doesnt do anything in transfer attributes. I have attached the file for you to look at anyways syracoj.