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Uving with HEADUS UVLayout-the human hand:-
For this demo we will create a path of footprints.

STEP 1:

The first thing that we need to do is to save out our model from Maya as an .obj file. Here you see my file is labeled original_hand.obj. I will drag this file directly onto the HeadusUVLayout icon on the desktop, or open the program and choose load. I need to make sure that my geometry type is set to Poly, and that my UVs will be set to new since we are just starting out. Every once in a while we should hit the E button (not the E key on the keyboard) in the Tmp section on the left. Headus has no undo function, so saving itteratively is the only way to safeguard your file. Save a new version after every consectutive major change.

STEP 2:

In the Ed (edit) view, we can cut apart our mesh for pelting. We use the C key to cut edges, and the W key to weld them back together. Unlike other programs where we hold down the button and click with the mouse, in Headus UVlayout, we mouse over the edge and press the C key (no LMB clicking required). You can see in my image below that my edge extend is set to 10 which will cut 10 continuous edges at once.

STEP 3:

Once all of my sections have been cut apart, I can Hit Enter to seperate the shells apart evenly. Once seperated, Space+MMB will manually move the shells apart.

STEP 4:

Choose a shell and hit D to drop the shell into the UV view. Below we can see how the mesh looks in the UV, ED, and 3D views. Once the
mesh is brought into the UV view, we can flatten it out using the F button. While this creates ok results in most places, it can bunch and overlap uvs and make them very mucky in other places. Use you Tmp save function to make sure that you have a save state to return to incase this flattens it out too much. We can edit the UVs further by flattening the them out with the brush. Hold down B to us the brush and push whole sections of UVs. The + and - keys will change the size of the brush. We can also manipulate the verticies individually using the combination of alt+MMB. For more options, visit the Headus User Preferences.

STEP 5:

Once we have multiple shells, we can weld them back together. Select an edge by hitting W in the UV view and its adjoinging edge will also be selected. Then hit enter to complete the weld. Weld additional edges simply by hitting W.

STEP 6:

While flattening out the mesh with or without the brush, we might want to pin down selected UVs. P will pin down the UVs. Shift-P on a UV boarder will pin that whole boarder at once (As you see below).

STEP 7:

Headus gives us color feedback as to how our UVs are distorting. By the time we are done, we probably will be doing alot of smoothing and flattening with out brush. Blue=compressed faces, Red=streteched faces, Green=perfect faces.

STEP 8:

Save the mesh and load it back into maya as an obj. It should now have it's uvs layed out as so in the UV texture editor:

STEP 9:

Apply a checker texture to test it out.... looks good, no?