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While tools like Maya or Blender already include UV mapping functionalities, some companies offer specialized tools that aim to be more powerful or efficient. Rizom-Lab is one such company.
We interviewed the CEO, Remi Arquier.
What does Rizom-Lab offer? What are the benefits of choosing specialized UV mapping solutions? Who are Rizom- Lab’s target clients, and what is their support policy? He provides all the details in this article.
Lastly, note that a Black Friday offer launches today and runs until December 8—you’ll find it detailed in the article!
3DVF: Hello Remi! You’re the head of Rizom-Lab, a company specializing in UV mapping. You’re launching a Black Friday promotion—a good opportunity to give us an overview of the tools you offer. Can you briefly introduce your tools?
Remi Arquier: Hello! At Rizom- Lab, we provide three main tools for UV mapping: RizomUV Virtual Spaces, RizomUV Real Space, and our C++ SDK.
RizomUV Virtual Spaces focuses on UV normalization, making it ideal for industries such as video games, visual effects, and digital media, where texture efficiency is crucial.
RizomUV Real Space is tailored for projects requiring real-world dimensions, such as industrial design or 3D printing. It ensures that UVs maintain the original model’s proportions and measurements.
Finally, our C++ SDK enables developers to integrate our UV mapping technology directly into their pipelines and applications, providing maximum flexibility and automation.
Below: A look at RizomUV 2024, the latest major release.
3DVF: Traditional 3D software (Maya, Blender, Max…) already includes UV tools. What advantages do your tools provide compared to these built-in features?
While traditional 3D software does indeed include UV tools, our solutions stand out due to several key advantages:
- Ultra-fast and scalable unwrapping: Our unwrapping algorithm is not only extremely fast but also designed to handle heavy meshes. It also offers the ability to constrain vertex positions, edge orientation, and alignment, which is often crucial for creating UVs that streamline the texturing process.
- Advanced mesh cutting and one-click UV generation: Our software includes numerous tools for semi-automatic mesh cutting (e.g., the “Polygon Magic Wand,” similar to Photoshop’s Magic Wand) or fully automatic cutting, enabling one-click UV generation. These options offer maximum flexibility, whether for precise work or fast production workflows.
- Optimized packing: Our packing function supports group management, targeting specific texel densities, and adapting to available space.
- Trimsheets and hotspot mapping: We’ve recently introduced trimsheet management and hotspot mapping, providing additional capabilities for highly optimized texturing workflows.
- UV copying: This feature detects mesh sections with similar topologies and automatically transfers their UVs, avoiding redundant work.
- Optimized UV viewports: Our viewports are specifically designed for UV editing, offering superior display and editing speed. Recent performance improvements make the experience even smoother.
- Analysis and visualization tools: The distortion and texel density bar enables real-time visual and statistical analysis of distortions and other data types. It also allows you to select primitives or islands corresponding to specific value ranges, immediately pinpointing areas needing adjustments.
- 17 years of expertise in UV mapping: Our nearly two decades of focus exclusively on UVs translate into a multitude of small features and precise adjustments. For instance, the seam welding tool automatically realigns the adjacent island and adds a relaxation iteration, ensuring maximum unwrapping quality. Many other tools and the overall user interface design also benefit from this extensive expertise.
3DVF: Which markets does Rizom target?
Rizom-Lab primarily targets the 3D, video game, animation, and visual effects (VFX) industries, where efficient UV management is crucial for artists and studios. With our RizomUV Virtual Spaces solution, we cater to professionals in these sectors as well as to freelancers and students, who also benefit from our intuitive and high-performance tool.
Additionally, we developed RizomUV Real Space to meet the specific needs of product design, architecture, and manufacturing sectors that require optimized solutions for physical objects.
3DVF: Could you share some examples of projects or clients that have used Rizom-Lab solutions?
Absolutely! Many renowned studios and artists in the 3D, animation, video game, and VFX industries rely on RizomUV to optimize their UV unwrapping workflows. For example, our solution is widely used by Ubisoft, VC Entertainment, Amazon Games, and Tencent Games. In the past three years, it has also gained significant traction in Asian studios, particularly in China, South Korea, and Japan, with clients such as Virtuos Games, Nexon, and Nintendo.
On the academic side, leading institutions like New3dge, Gnomon, TTTC, MOPA, ArtFX, Savannah, and Voxel School have also integrated our solutions into their curricula, ensuring that future artists master professional tools during their training.
3DVF: For those who may have tried Rizom’s solutions a few years ago, what are the main recent developments?
Our software already had many tools, and their number kept growing with each new version, which made the interface cluttered. We undertook a major redesign, reorganizing the panels and introducing new widgets, resizable windows, etc., to make the interface more ergonomic, clear, and intuitive.
We improved viewport speed, frame rates, selection times for meshes with millions of polygons, and transformations. We also significantly optimized (by 10x or more) the speed of our core algorithms, including unwrapping, packing, and automatic cutting.
Additionally, we introduced trimsheet management and hotspot mapping, added support for Pixar’s USD format, integrated with NVIDIA Omniverse, enabled Python scripting, improved snapping tools, revamped alignment and fitting tools, enhanced support for HDPI screens, upgraded distortion analysis tools, and much more.
3DVF: You’re launching a Black Friday promotion—can you tell us more about it?
Indeed, for Black Friday, we are offering a 30% discount on our RizomUV licenses! This promotion will run from November 29 to December 8, using the discount code BLACKFRIDAY. It’s a great opportunity for artists and studios to equip themselves with our UV mapping solution at a reduced price. Whether for game, animation, or product design projects, we hope this promotion will encourage new users to discover the advantages of RizomUV.
3DVF: One last question: adopting a tool also means expecting support and updates. How are support and future developments managed?
We release one major version per year, a significant update every six months, and numerous smaller updates for fixes and high-value improvements that are easy to implement. We are very attentive to our users via Discord.
A subscription license provides access to all available updates. Perpetual license holders, on the other hand, can access updates released within the year following their purchase date.
For more information
- Visit the Rizom-Lab website, where you’ll find the 30% discount offer using the code BLACKFRIDAY for purchases made by December 8.
