Some ideas for the UV editor
There is not enough control of the UV unwrapping process. Too much automatization isn't always good. Please, improve the UV editor.
a) Hiding all islands while turning off UV Sync is a pretty much useless thing. We can press Shift+H if we need it. But while working on UVs it is good to see all of them even while working on one island.
b) Programs never know which areas of the model are important,- and can be stretched (or compressed) more than others. So blender tries to unwrap the whole UV island evenly. It would be awesome to have a chance to unfold only selected parts of UV island again without separating it from the island. It helps to unfold the most important parts of the model most optimally and shrink unimportant parts without making extra seams. So if for example, we scaled, relaxed or just moved some points of the UV island it would be amazing if we could then just select the stretched uneven areas that appeared and unfold it to an optimal point (not just relax but unfold) while unselected polygons keep their position and only limit the area in which selected UVs should remain. At this point the stretched UVs outside the selected area won’t affect the current unfold operation and will allow unfolding the selected area much cleaner.(let me know if an example needed)
c) I am not sure about this part. Maybe I just don’t understand the profit… But Why there are seams on UVs that are not visible as the seam on the model? And why if we clear the seam on the model we can not automatically sew it on UVs? I think it is a nice option to control the same seams both in 3D and 2D view.
3 Comments
Fully agree, UV's needs some love and attention...
a) just matter of workflow b) pins deal with this c) in blender seams is just marking for future unwrap if it happens. Anyway i also prefer combining both modes in one, syncing selections in uv and 3d, more marking tools (straight, vertical, horizontal, preserve hole etc) for unwrapping. And better controlled relax algorithm..
* @EP * "a) just matter of workflow" well, I believe the workflow should be logical and reasonable. Is there really any reason to hide unselected islands of the selected model? "b) pins deal with this" unfortunately not=( When blender unfold, for example, face, it makes occiput huge, while the face itself stays extremely small. Trying to fix an almost symmetrical face with the pins and moves and relax and all these brushes takes a lot of time and feels like a hell. While in maya for example, it takes less than a minute to unfold the selected area of the island and UV will eventually take the right place. It is a very powerful option that saves a lot of time. And it is relevant for almost every organic model.