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Automatic UV Unwrapping | Substance 3D Painter

Automatic UV Unwrapping


The automatic UV unwrapping allow to generate UV islands automatically when importing a 3D model. It can be used to paint on 3D model that don't have any existing UVs.

Enabling the automatic UV unwrapping

When creating a new project or re-importing a mesh into an existing project, make sure the setting "Auto-unwrap" is checked. If disabled, the process will be skipped and mesh UVs will remain as-is.

UV unwrapping settings

When importing a mesh and using the unwrapping process, the following settings are available. Some settings are available via the Options button in the interface.

Section

Setting

Description

Unwrap sequence

Seams

Controls if the seams (UV island borders) should be generated only for meshes that don't have them or always regenerated.

Possible values:

  • Generate missing data (default): Seams will be generated for meshes missing them.
  • Recompute all : Seams will be generated for all the meshes.

UV islands

Controls if the UV unwrapping should generated from meshes without UVs or for any meshes.

Possible values:

  • Generate missing data (default): UV unwrapping will be generated for meshes missing UVs.
  • Recompute all : UV unwrapping will be generated for all the meshes.

Packing

Controls the packing/layout of UV islands of the meshes.

Possible values:

  • Generate missing data (default): pack UV islands for meshes that were missing UVs.
  • Recompute all : pack all UV islands.

Layout customization

Margin size

Defines the spacing between UV islands. This setting applies a general percentage independent from the resolution.

Possible values:

  • No margin : 0%
  • Small (default): 0.2%
  • Medium : 0.5%
  • Large : 1%

UV island orientation

Control the orientation of the UV islands during the packing process.

Possible values:

  • Unconstrained (default): no constrain is applied to compute the orientation.
  • Align with 3D mesh: constrain the UV island to be oriented toward the mesh direction

UV Tiles

Maximum number of UV Tiles

If the UV Tiles workflow is enabled, this settings determine the maximum number of tiles to produce to distribute on the UV islands.

Optimization

Avoid elongated UV islands

If enabled, this process will split UV islands considered too long to improve the usage of the texture space.

Example of before (top) and after (bottom):

Known limitations

Below is a list of limitations related to the unwrapping process:

  • Processing high poly meshes can take a long time.
  • Vertices at the exact same coordinates are merged
  • UV Generation may fail on some mesh parts in some rare cases
  • Non uniform or highly distorted texel ratio in a single UV island in some cases
  • Non uniform texel ratio between Texture Sets
  • UV island generated can be very elongated and do not fit into UV space in some cases
  • Degenerated faces or non-triangular mesh faces with small or overlapping edges may not get UV unwrapped

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