The Edit UVWs dialog contains a number of rollouts that provide various tools for editing texture coordinates. Among these are tools for transforming and subdividing UVWs procedurally, thus providing artists with useful shortcuts for more-efficient texture editing.
The Edit UVWs dialog rollouts are arrayed vertically on the right side of the dialog, and can be opened, closed, and scrolled just like rollouts on the command panels.
You can transform UVW sub-objects using the mouse with the tools on the upper toolbar, or procedurally with these tools.
Freeform pivot moved outside gizmo
Left: Initial vertex selection
Right: After Align Horizontally
At the Edge level, if you press Shift when clicking the button, Align loops through all selected edges and lines up all the edge loops of those edges horizontally. In that case it is enough to select one edge on each edge loop to line up. It can also line up UV seam edge loops.
Left: Initial edge selection
Right: After Align Horizontally In Place with Shift held down
At the Edge level, if you press Shift when clicking the button, Align loops through all selected edges and lines up all the edge loops of those edges vertically. In that case it is enough to select one edge on each edge loop to line up. It will also line up UV seam edge loops.
Aligning edges:
1. Initial edge ring selection
2. After using Align Vertically In Place with Shift pressed
3. Initial edge ring selection
4. After using Align Horizontally In Place with Shift pressed
Left: Initial edge selection
Right: After using Linear Align
Left: Closeup of one edge selected on the top border of the cluster
Right: The edge rotated to horizontal, and the entire cluster rotated the same amount.
For example, to create a horizontal loop of texture polygons of uniform width, first select the horizontal edge loops above and below the polygons, then click Space Horizontally.
Left: Initial edge-loop selection
Right: After using Space Horizontally; the vertices within each loop are spaced evenly.
Space Horizontally is best used at the Edge level. It also works at the Vertex level, but it converts the vertex selection internally to edges. Thus, to avoid ambiguous results when working at the Vertex level, use it with single loops of selected vertices.
At the Edge level, if you press Shift when clicking the button, Space Horizontally works on the edge loop to which each selected edge belongs. In that case it is enough to select one edge on each edge loop to space. It also applies to UV seam edge loops.
Left: Initial edge ring selection
Right: After using Space Horizontally with Shift pressed to space each edge’s loop
For example, to create a vertical loop of texture polygons of uniform height, first select the vertical edge loops on the polygons' left and right sides, then click Space Vertically.
Space Vertically is best used at the Edge level. It also works at the Vertex level, but it converts the vertex selection internally to edges. Thus, to avoid ambiguous results when working at the Vertex level, use it with single loops of selected vertices.
At the Edge level, if you press Shift when clicking the button, Space Vertically works on the edge loop to which each selected edge belongs. In that case it is enough to select one edge on each edge loop to space. It also applies to UV seam edge loops.
Use the Brush tool to tweak specific texture coordinates to eliminate or minimize distortion in the map.
Left: Initial layout
Right: After selecting all polygons, applying Straighten Selection, and deselecting the polygons
Relaxing texture vertices can make them more evenly spaced, resulting in easier texture mapping.
Most UV vertices and edges on cluster seams (that is, on the outer edge of a cluster) have shared sub-objects on other cluster seams. Both represent the same sub-object in the object mesh, but are represented twice or more in the UV mapping because of the subdivision into clusters. Use the Stitch tools to connect selected sub-objects on a cluster seam to their shared sub-objects on another cluster's seam. To see shared sub-objects in the editor window (highlighted in blue by default), turn on Display menu Show Shared Sub-Objects, or Unwrap Options dialog Show Shared Subs. You can also use the Show Shared Subs setting to change the color of highlighted shared sub-objects. Also, with Show Vertex Connections on at the Vertex level, you can see exactly which vertices will be connected to which.
Although Stitch works only at the vertex and edge levels, it is available at all sub-object levels, and applies to all seam-based vertices and edges associated with the selected sub-objects. If only one UV vertex is selected and it has more than one corresponding UV vertex, it will be stitched to the closest one. In all other cases Stitch finds the best match, if the match is unselected, or stitches to the selected match.
This tool is also available as Stitch Selected on the editor Tools menu.
1. Texture vertices before stitching
2. Stitch to Source
3. Stitch to Average
4. Stitch to Target
Use the tools in the first row of this rollout for breaking up texture coordinates into separate clusters. The Flatten tools work on selected texture polygons, or if no polygons are selected, on all polygons.
For explanations of the settings, see Flatten Mapping Dialog.
When flattening by smoothing group, in order to form a separate cluster, a group of polygons must be fully enclosed by hard edges; that is, polygons that do not share any smoothing group IDs with their neighbors. If some polygons have multiple smoothing group IDs, it's possible that the texture coordinates would not be able to be split into separate clusters.
With the exception of Target Weld, the Weld commands here combine edges on different clusters at the average of their positions.
Turn on Target Weld, and then drag one vertex to another vertex, or one edge to another edge. As you drag, the cursor changes in appearance to cross hairs when it's over a valid sub-object. While this command is active, you can continue welding sub-objects, and change the sub-object level. To exit Target Weld mode, right-click in the editor window.
Also, in both cases, each pair of sub-objects containing the shared vertices or edges must be selected. With Weld Any Match With Selected, only one of each pair need be selected.
Sets the weld threshold: the radius within which welding using Weld Selected and Weld Selected Subobject (see preceding) take effect. The value uses UV-space distance. Default=0.01. Range=0 to 10.
The Peel tools provide an implementation of the LSCM (Least Square Conformal Maps) method of unwrapping texture coordinates, for an easy and inutuitive workflow in flattening complex surfaces. This rollout also includes tools for working with the Pin aspect of the Peel feature. When using Peel, pinned vertices are held in place while the rest of the vertices move.
The Peel tools are available initially only when the Polygon sub-object level is active and texture polygons are selected. The peeling operation you choose applies only to those selected polygons. However, when Peel Mode is active, the Peel Mode button remains active and available no matter which sub-object level you activate. You can select different sub-objects while using Peel Mode, but only the texture coordinates that belong to the polygons that were selected when you first activated Peel Mode are subject to peeling. To peel different polygons, turn off Peel Mode, make a different selection, and then reactivate Peel Mode.
For a brief demonstration of how to use the Peel tools, see this procedure.
Quick Peel is suitable for simple texture-mapping applications, but for better control, use Peel Mode instead (see following).
While Peel Mode is active, peeled polygons use distinctive coloring, which makes it easier to see which part of the texture coordinates you're peeling. The color is violet by default; to adjust the color, change the Peel Color setting.
Activating Peel Mode automatically switches to the Vertex sub-object level, but you can use Peel Mode at any sub-object level. When Detach is on (see preceding), Peel Mode also separates the peeled cluster from the other texture coordinates.
While Peel Mode is active, you can create seams with the Edit Seams and Point-to-Point Seams tools and they automatically "peel" off as you go. Alternatively, in the editor, select some edges and use the Break tool to split the edges and automatically re-peel the cluster.
When Auto-Pin Moved Vertices is on (the default), moving a sub-object in Peel mode pins (locks) all vertices belonging to the sub-object.
Use Reset Peel to reconnect map seams on previously mapped geometry, or to quickly break off and Peel a selection.
When a vertex is pinned, it is held still when you move other vertices in Peel Mode (see preceding). By default, Auto-Pin Moved Vertices is on, so that moving a sub-object with Peel Mode active subsequently pins its vertices.
A pinned vertex is indicated visually with a small blue square outline.
Use these tools to arrange elements automatically in various ways. Packing is useful for adjusting the layout so that clusters don't overlap.
The Pack tools apply only to selected clusters when one or more sub-objects are selected, or to all clusters when nothing is selected.
Pack: Custom respects the Rescale Priority value (see following) when Rescale Clusters is on.
Rescale Elements respects the Rescale Priority value (see following) whether or not the Rescale switch is on. When groups are present, it always applies to the group members plus any selection (or all clusters if nothing is selected). If no groups are present, Rescale Elements applies only to selected clusters when one or more sub-objects are selected, or to all clusters when nothing is selected.
Pack Together respects the Rescale Priority value (see following) when groups are present and the Rescale switch is on.
Pack Normalize respects the Rescale Priority value (see following) when groups are present and the Rescale switch is on.
Grouping in the Unwrap UVW modifier lets you specify that certain texture clusters should stay together during Pack operations (see preceding). You can also specify relative rescaling for grouped clusters.
Rescale Priority applies to these tools under the specified conditions:
To use Rescale Priority, first group one or more clusters (see Group Selected, following), then set the value. Then, when you use an operation that involves rescaling, the Rescale Priority value is applied to this group as a multiplier.
For example, say you group some clusters, and then select a polygon belonging to one of the clusters and set Rescale Priority to 0.5. Then you apply Pack Together or Pack Normalize to all clusters, with the Rescale option enabled. The result is that the clusters belonging to the group are half the size that they would be otherwise. (Non-grouped clusters always use a scaling factor of 1.0, or 100%.)
The Groups functions are available at the Polygon sub-object level only. Using Pack Together or Pack Normalize on grouped clusters retains the original spatial relationship of the members of each group, and optionally applies scaling based on the Rescale Priority value for a group and the state of the Rescale option.
For example, if two or more clusters are superimposed because they represent different parts of the geometry that use the same part of the texture map, you could keep them from separating during Pack procedures by selecting them all and then clicking Group Selected.
After you create a group, you can, in effect, select the group by selecting any polygon in the group. Doing so enables two features:
If you use Select Group with multiple groups (that is, multiple polygons selected in different groups), only one group is selected. Which group gets selected is unpredictable.