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.
NoteBefore 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
- Select the objects or faces whose UVs
you want to lay out.
- Select
Edit UVs > UV Texture Editor to
display the UV Texture Editor.
- In the UV Texture Editor,
select
Edit UVs > Layout> .
The Polygon
Layout Options window appears.
- 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.
- Click Apply to
perform the layout operation or Layout UVs if
you want to perform the operation and close the Layout
UVs Options window.