Big Trouble In Little Blender – 1.2 Initial UV Unwrapping Notes

Notes made during my first attempt a UV Editing on Blender.

These probably won’t be useful for anyone other than myself. I’m planning on building models as required, rather than in one lump – Which means I’ll probably forget everything in the meantime – To avoid that as much as possible, I’m hoping to use this as a reference point – Allowing me to learn new tools & features of blender; rather than constantly relearning the same tools.

Apologies for any obvious mistakes or omissions – These notes were made as I was learning, and not necessarily as I had learnt.

Select UV editing from the Screen Layout pulldown at the top of the window – This will show uv window on left & edit window on the right.

 

Setup Environment:

In edit window…
Select Limit Selection To Visible icon in bottom left (right of faces icon, two squares with squares for corners).
Select & drag the add window lines in the top right of the user perspective window – & pull left – this will create a new sub window…
…In this window, select the Editor Type pull-down (bottom left – cube with up & down arrow) & select Outliner.
Resize windows as required.
Ensure – show texture is active – click Viewport Shading pulldown at bottom thee window (circle icon) & select Texture.

In UV window:
On the right hand side of the window – select & drag the Grease Pencil window to the right (until it is removed from the screen).
On the left hand side – select & pull the plus tab – This will initially just show grease pencil again, however once faces have UV settings applied, it will display translate/rotate/scale buttons.
Click the UV Selection and display mode: Island icon – this is an icon with two rectangles – right one is orange – may need to resize window to make this visible.

 

Edit UV’s:

In edit window:
Change to edit mode – Using the Mode Select pull down menu at the bottom of the screen
Select the Selection Type – Face (icon of cube with one face selected).
Select everything (press A).
From the menu’s at the bottom of the edit window: Mesh->UV Unwrap->[select unwrap method here] – unwraps model for UV painting.

In UV window:
ALT-O – Opens file explorer to add texture.
Add texture – this will apply the same texture to all faces – Otherwise the texture will need to be reapplied for each group.

In edit window – For individual faces/groups of faces:
Change to edit mode – from Mode Select pull down menu at the bottom of the screen
Choose Selection Type – Face (icon of cube with one face selected).
Use right mouse button to select individual faces – ctrl + right mouse button multiple faces
From the menu’s at the bottom of the edit window: Mesh->UV Unwrap->[select unwrap method here] – this will unwrap the selected faces.

In UV window:
Select everything (press A) or right mouse click for individual faces.
Use translate/rotate/scale in the Mesh Tools column to move and position faces on texture
– right mouse button to select faces.
– pressing translate/rotate/scale will select their faces (e.g. after pressing scale, moving the mouse will rescale the selected faces without needing to press the left or right mouse button)
– once complete click left mouse button to place/apply.

 

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