Unwrapping In Max

[BrianKitts]

I'm working on a project of an amphitheatre that sports a curved wall that sweeps up and down to varying elevations. It was no problem to build based on the designers explanation and sketches. Problem is he now wants an "unwrapped" flat elevation of what this thing looks like.

 

ANY IDEAS? I've used the unfold tool in formZ before, but that only works well for solid objects. Keep in mind this object was built in MAX, so its a mesh, when I take it into formZ its completly triangulated, so the unwrap tool, makes it look like a bomb just went off!

 

Any suggestions would be appreciated! - thanks

[MegaPixel]

Do you want unwrapped geometry? or just an unwrapped Image?

 

I was thinking for an Image, you could use the Panorama Exporter feature to create a 360 image file using cylindrical mapping?

 

Or perhaps UV map the Ampitheater with Cylindrical mapping and use the UV Unwrap feature to get a similar effect as above.

 

Or... you could just remodel the curvy wall part in Form-Z and use the flatten feature mode on the "Solid" model to lay it out flat.

 

In Solidworks, I would model the walls as a Sheet-Metal part and get a flattened profile automatically. Again, this kind of power tends to come from the parametric solid modeling packages.

 

Hope I sparked some ideas - Mega