Layout UV shells

The Layout feature automatically repositions UV shells so they don’t overlap in UV texture space and maximizes the spacing and fit between them. This is useful for ensuring that the UV shells occupy their own separate UV texture space. For example, if you are applying Fur to a surface, the UV texture coordinates on a given shell must not overlap.

In general, you should keep UV shells separated for convenience and clarity. It is not absolutely necessary to keep UV shells separate. For example, you may want the UV shells to overlap so different faces use the same region of a texture.

You can also use the Layout feature to:

• Scale or stretch the UV shells to fit within the 0 to 1 coordinates of the UV Texture Editor. This is useful if you need to maximize the texture space used when creating a texture map. For example, when using 3D Paint.
• Flip UV shells that correspond to opposite sides of a model. This automatically corrects the orientation of the UV shell if the UV winding order is incorrect. See Display UV winding order.
• Arrange the UV layout of multiple selected objects simultaneously. This improves your efficiency when you need to quickly sort the UVs for multiple objects within the UV Texture Editor, or when multiple objects need to share different parts of the same texture.

  By default, when Layout is used with multiple objects, the UVs for each object are placed individually. As a result, they overlap each other within the UV Texture Editor. This saves you the work of having to lay out each UV set individually. When the Layout Multiple Objects option is set to Non-Overlapping, the UVs are laid out as if all of the objects were combined as one.

  The Layout feature is also available from within the UV Texture Editor by selecting Polygons > Layout from the UV Texture Editor’s menu bar.

  Note

  Before using Layout you should already have performed the necessary UV projection mapping or Automatic Mapping. That is, the Layout feature will only arrange existing UV texture coordinates, it will not create them.

To lay out UVs for multiple objects simultaneously

1. Select the objects or faces whose UVs you want to lay out.
2. Select Edit UVs > UV Texture Editor to display the UV Texture Editor.
3. In the UV Texture Editor, select Polygons > Layout > .

   The Layout UVs Options window appears.

4. In the Layout UVs Options window set the following options depending on your required outcomes:
   • Set Layout objects to Per Object (overlapping) (default) when you require multiple object’s UVs to overlap within the UV texture space.
   • Set Layout objects to Single or Multiple Objects (non-overlapping) when you require the UVs to be separated. This is useful when you need each UV set to be separate and distinct from each other.
   • Set Prescale to Object to maximize the spacing and fit between the UV shells.
   • Set the Shell Stacking option to adjust the spacing between UV shells by specifying how the bounding shape for the UV shells will be described. In general, the UV layout will have more space when the Bounding Box option is set, and less space when the Shape option is set. When the Scale Mode is set to Uniform the shells are scaled to make optimal use of the UV texture space.
5. Click Apply to perform the layout operation or Layout UVs if you want to perform the operation and close the Layout UVs Options window.

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