Subdiv Surfaces > Texture > Planar Mapping

Subdiv Surfaces > Texture > Planar Mapping >

By default, Smart Fit is turned on, which automatically positions the projection manipulator. If you prefer to specify exact values for the projection manipulator, you can turn off Smart Fit and change the values in the Projection Center, Rotation, Width, and Height settings instead.

Fit to Best Plane: If you want to map UVs for a portion of the object’s faces, you can turn on Fit to Best Plane and the projection manipulator snaps to an angle and rotation aimed directly at the selected faces.
Fit to 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 Mapping direction options to establish the orientation of the projection manipulator.
Mapping direction: Choose an axis 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 toward the Y axis, while a horse model standing on the grid would have most of its faces pointing toward the X or Z axis.

If most of the model’s faces point somewhere that is not directly along the X, Y, or Z axis, you can choose Camera. This option positions the projection manipulator based on the current active view.
Insert Before Deformers: The Insert Before Deformers option is relevant when the 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 object before the deformation is applied to it. Basically, 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.
Image Center: This value represents the center of the projected UVs. Changing this value translates the center accordingly.
Image Rotation: 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.
Keep Image 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.

If Smart Fit is turned off, the following options become available. You can enter values to change the Projection Center, Rotation and Scale. After you project a texture, you can change these values from the Channel Box or the Attribute Editor, or use the corresponding manipulator handles to interactively adjust the map.

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.
Projection Rotation: 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: Adjusts the width (U) of the projection relative to the 3D projection axis.
Projection Height: Adjusts the height (V) of the projection relative to the 3D projection axis.