Create UVs > Planar Mapping

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User-defined UV mapping

Create UVs > Planar Mapping >

Fit projection to:

By default, the projection manipulator is automatically positioned based on one of two settings:

Best plane: If you want to map UVs for a portion of the object’s faces, you can select Best plane and the projection manipulator snaps to an angle and rotation aimed directly at the selected faces.
Bounding box: This option works best when you are mapping UVs to all or most of an object’s faces. It snaps the projection manipulator to fit within the object’s bounding box. With this option on, you must choose one of the Project from directions to establish the orientation of the projection manipulator.

Project from: Choose an axis (X, Y, Z) so that the projection manipulator is aimed at the majority of the object’s faces. For example, a turtle model sitting on the grid would have most of its faces pointing along the Y axis, while a horse model standing on the grid would have most of its faces pointing along the X or Z axis.

Choose the Camera option if most of the model’s faces point somewhere that is not directly along the X, Y, or Z axis. This option positions the projection manipulator based on the current active view.
Keep image width/height ratio: Turn this option on to retain the width to height ratio of the image so that the image does not distort. Turn it off so that the mapped UVs fill the 0 to 1 coordinates in the UV Texture Editor.
Insert projection before deformers: The Insert projection before deformers option is relevant when the polygonal object has a deformation applied to it. If the option is turned off and the deformation is animated, the texture placement is affected by the change in vertex positions. This leads to “swimming” textures.

Turning this option on applies the texture placement to the polygonal object before the deformation is applied to it. That is, the texture placement dependency graph node is inserted before the deformer dependency graph nodes and the texture “sticks” to the geometry even after the deformation.
Create new UV set: Turn this option on to create a new UV set and place the UVs created by the projection in that set. Type the name of your UV set in the UV Set name box.

Manually adjusting the projection manipulator

You can use the manipulator handles to interactively adjust the UV map that gets projected or enter values to change the Projection Center, Rotation and Scale using either the Channel Box or the Attribute Editor. These values correspond to the manipulator handles that display when you map your texture onto the polygon.

Projection Center: The projection center defines the point of origin in the X, Y, or Z axis from where you can project a texture map. By default, this is the center of the selected faces in the X, Y, or Z axis.
Rotate: Type a value to rotate the projection in the 3D view around the X, Y, or Z axis which subsequently rotates the texture.
Projection Width: Sets the width (U) of the projection relative to the 3D projection axis.
Projection Height: Sets the height (V) of the projection relative to the 3D projection axis.
Image Center: This value represents the center of the projected UVs. Changing this value translates the center accordingly.
Rotation Angle: This value changes the angle at which UVs are rotated in the 2D window. Drag the slider or enter a value to rotate the image.
Image Scale: This value represents the width (U) or the height (V) of the 2D map relative to the 2D center point.