Become a BOSS at UV Unwrapping (Tutorial)

Welcome to my 2-hour UV Unwrapping Masterclass for hard surface models! This video is going to cover a lot, so I hope this helps ease any confusion you may have around the topic.
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My recommended unwrapping addons:
UV Packmaster 2 Pro - gumroad.com/a/...
Zen UV - gumroad.com/a/...
Texel Density Article mentioned in video - 80.lv/articles...
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[@maxungar516]

damn. always blows my mind how you pump out such huge amounts of material and it's all gold, and then give it to the community for free. absolute boss

[@JoshGambrell]

Thanks Max!

[@pygmalion8952]

@@JoshGambrell i will be sure to support you as soon as i start my career and get some money friendo. thx for your contribution.

[@user-dt4dx4vs6s]

35:00 easy way: 1.Ctrl+ALT+Left-Click 2.Select/Checker-Deselect 3.Select/Select Loops/Edge Loops 4.Ctrl+X

[@rabatindominik]

exactly this, basically deselect one segment as he does in video but before deleting vertices select all loops ;) good comment!

[@Seekay_]

I've been casually 3d modeling for at least 15 years but UV mapping has always seemed like black magic to me. This clarified a lot of things.

[@Batuhan96glaive]

I am doing a case study to start a job. I've finished modelling last night and THIS, IS WHAT I NEEDED THANK YOU

[@JoshGambrell]

Hell yeah!

[@aurymcclain2085]

To fix the baking artifacts at 1:49:40, reduce the Max Offset slider on the left. Try to make your cage as small as possible while still containing every detail of the high-poly mesh, and use offset painting as a last resort. This area has an artifact because it is concave and smaller than the cage size. When the baker projects, it picks up the outermost surface of the high-poly mesh within the cage.

[@nicholascureton933]

I'm here because Grant posted a video about this.

[@romank9121]

9:45 u can keep bevel modifier(limit by weight) alive on cutters to just decrease segment in any time 12:28 bevel segments are counted by faces, not by edges... (just use even number to easily decimate later on ) 35:00 u can delete n-gone cap, use decimate modifier and then fill cap back again 49:20 just copy previous geometry and move by "selection to active", or Ctrl+L - Link Object Data - (Make local if needed), same on tubes, tiers etc., u can use linked duplicate (Alt+D) during modelling 1:55:28 the 1st part should be - apply scale 1:25:40 u can save much more uv-space if u cut hidden parts of model, some big parts of your model are visible less then 30%, and i dont think you realy need unique uv-space for all 6 wheels) I like videos like this, with comments, explanations, and not on 40x speed. even if you are good at what you do, there is always something to learn, to organize your knowledge more, to pick up some tricks and tips. Thank you🙌

[@altwhisper6920]

Thank you for sharing different aspects full and complex. Didn't saw it yet, but certainly will do.

[@danielo2704]

Your videos have been really helpful in my journey of working with and understanding intricate concepts in blender. It is really encouraging to watch you work through and break down complex meshes, it makes it less intimidating when approaching similar problems, and to push through time consuming repetitive tasks. Thanks for all that. And if I can be of help to you with respect to the checker deselect stuff when you were working on those cylinders. You could easily select one edge, then from the select option in the menu bar, you do the "edge ring" select; after which you do the "checker deselect", and then lastly, still from the select menu, do "edge loop" select. This will accomplish what you were trying to do easily and quickly. I usually have those select options as quick shortcuts, but I guess someone can make it into an addon for you as I have no experience in that area. Hope this helps. Safe man.

[@haffystube]

Best UV showdown for Blender I have seen.

[@crisschan2463]

sorry for the bump, and if you already know this (i think you do) maybe neglect this but one thing i discover in your problem @ 35:04, what i do is to select one edge (inthis case one from the cylinder vertical) then shift select another edge (lets to the right) skipping the adjacent edge (manual checkered select), then ctrl+shift+numpad + to automatically select all same spacing of edges then i use the alt click of meshmachine to select all linear edge of the current active edges (so you wont need to do this on every segmented vertical edges in a cylinder), it makes it handy and faster if checkered deselect doesnt work

[@redakumaproduction]

The best modeler i have ever seen !! Efficiancy !

[@danielnwachukwu8688]

Blessings will never depart from you for making this free!!! 🙏🏽❤️🔥🔥🔥🔥

[@112productions]

Hi josh, I am at 35 mins and picking up many tips, so thank you. You present very well. I see you struggling with the checker deselect and I may have a tip for you. In that situation where the algorithm farts, I select 1 edge, select edge rings, then checker deselect that, then select edge loops. I have checker deselect, select edge rings and select edge loops under Q for quick faves. Not always workable and you may have to deselect some loops after. Hope this helps Edit: Ah I just read the comments and see others also have another alternative. For some objects it doesn’t work and goes too far along the edge loop, but there can be other work arounds like like hiding parts of the mesh that you don’t want it to run through. 2nd edit, I should have watched more before originally commenting sorry. The thing your missing is simply Select>edge rings.

[@Nullscr1pt]

Thanks for the video, this is where I am currently at in my 3D career :) Got HardOps / Boxcutter a week ago and have been making a game for the past 3 months. Also learned some substance painter, so I am now at the point where I want to go back make some HardSurface high poly and low poly them for the game, perfecto! :) exactly what I wanted. Thanks for the tutorial.

[@tbrg1965]

@ 12:00 I have a way to convert these uneven bevels. It's a little laborious, but gives good results. You can solve the eneven segment issue by going to the first two verts after the most outer edge of the bevel (select only the two on one side of the segments.) Then Press Alt-M and choose the first option: "At Center" This merges the two vertices in the very center of where they were originally. Repeat with the other existing sets within the outer edge, then repeat on the opposite side of the segments. You now have a bevel that started out odd, and now is an even number ; while still preserving the original outer edges.

[@rikovladimir8655]

you are a master of your craft

[@edogarcia2049]

This has been really hepfull to me, to have a general view of the process has helped me to do not be afraid of UV and actually want to try learn more about. Really good material from Josh once again 💪

[@storiesstrauss3402]

Subbed! I'm having a really hard time moving from Maya to Blender but this tutorial was exactly what I've been looking for.

[@umbraeaccipiter9622]

@35:00 my method. Line mode, CTL+ALT+Left click. Checker deselect, Then do the same for the next part with a Shift+ALT+CTRL+Left Click, you can get any horizontal edges with just a Shift+ALT click. Once you have all the parts selected, dissolve edges, done. only trick is to ensure you always start by clicking on a line you will keep, which is easy to see after the fist deselect, just keep clicking on edges connected to non selected edges. You can then Alt+ Much faster as you are not constantly changing modes, or removing part of the selection.

[@denkozlov4220]

Thank you for making it free, you're awesome guys

[@edemduku3391]

thanks very much for the workflow. it's given me a very good understanding of not only unwrapping, and i'll keep coming here cos the comments are also notes.

[@darreldash]

Bro this video is great. This helped me to understand uv unwrapping so much better and it seems so much easier to me now! Thanks a lot!

[@Stillenacht3D]

Thank you for the video! I noticed Blender does an excellent job when it comes to unwrapping hard surface/mechanical models but from my experience can be a bit lacking when it comes to organic forms even though I use angle based unwrapping. Unless I'm missing something it's not as strong as other software. I'd like to see a good character head unwrap for a character using Blender's default UV tools

[@emilfeliz1476]

omg this video is so powerfull, yisus I really thank you for this bro you don't imagine how much you help, i hope you keep doing this.

[@ink_redemption_jack4244]

For alternative loop selection i usually do ring select one edge, then checker deselect and then use edge loop.

[@denvo6372]

Лучший ! Hello from Russia. Realy like your tutorial and stuff.

[@user-hb2tq5ep9n]

ну, по хард серфейс лучший канал на ютубе

[@JoshGambrell]

Thank you!

[@danielanderson4640]

A new subscriber here! Grant Abbitt recommended your channel. Thanks for the Tutorial

[@JoshGambrell]

Thanks Daniel!

[@Spriddy]

bro, thank you so much! i can finally do my substance retextures!

[@genesis2303]

This is just pure gold!

[@backyy07]

it was very satisfying to watch and i definitely learned allot of new stuff

[@bocaguy57]

FANTASTIC video!! thank you!

[@ErrRationale]

Something I noticed is that you keep a lot of large face areas that wont be visible, I believe deleting those faces would be a viable option to get more texel density.

[@JoshGambrell]

Absolutely. You gotta be careful because of the size here. It’s massive and can be walked under, etc. So more shit becomes visible.

[@olekstarasov]

Thank you Your masterclass guide me into Blender UV.

[@Cubify_Studio]

incredible video, packed with invaluable material and information, it has helped me progress tremendously. :))

[@ojonasdev]

35:00 shift+left click on the first edge of the ring loop. After that, with the shift key still pressed, press ctrl and double left click. i have the "enable 3rd button" option activate,idk if matters, butI Thought it might be important to say this

[@judofernando8298]

can u make an explanation for UV bigger object ? such as terrain or castle. still a bit confuse about texturing, since i always got a pixelated result when i start texturing in substance painter.

[@brandonjacksoon]

Thanks, Josh! Liked and subscribed! Keep your tutorials up ;)

[@vivekcharan417]

35:00 = select all edge then checker deselect then use select Edge loop then delete

[@andrenassifv]

Bro awesome tutorial 🤯 tysm!

[@ilyachernobrov]

Hi Josh, thanks for the video it’s very informative for learning blender. As for bakes all this bugs are pretty important to fix when we do production asset. You can easily do it by adding more bake groups in marmoset. Cheers ;)

[@marsmotion]

yeah thats how marmo knows to limit the ray casts to certain things only. i wish tho it would have an option for limiting that by mesh name instead. making all those groups manually can be time consuming. im surprised in the new version thats not an option. thats a missed op on their part since their asking everyone to upgrade now.

[@kokoalmasry]

thank you so much mr josh i learned a lot about uvs in this video

[@everythingwow1897]

Watched it all, great stuff

[@vassk1587]

Thanks! from Siberia respect

[@xDaShaanx]

This is just gonna be amazing. 😮

[@dkman123]

Somewhere around minute 50 the ShowKeys stopped working, which is a bummer. But great job showing the process and describing what and why you're doing things.

[@Strider1122]

As usual thank you!

[@ilovedatfruitybooty9546]

I love this guy.

[@TitusKrakenDesigns]

Damn good video again! Happy NEW YEAR, and more GOOD VIDEOS!

[@nurb2kea]

Very nice Tutorial. Thanks - cleared some mystery in my UV thinking... :-)

[@marcindomanski5654]

what a great tutorial!

[@rossknowles5608]

just what i needed. thanks

[@landaheadfilms]

Amazing tutorial!! - Thank you 🙏🙏🙌🙌😀😀

[@baskapes762]

On time, perfect.

[@thenotorious8382]

I'm 2 weeks into blender / 3D modeling but I'm watching this O.O, I find it to watch your videos, any beginner advice would you give to me?

[@alicescat2828]

Thank you! Great tutorial!

[@MasterThief117]

To solve your woes about the checker-deselect tool not checker-deselecting properly across loops (around the 36 minute mark), I have a quicker solution. You can go into Edge Select mode and hold Ctrl+Alt and then right-click one of the edges inside the loop. This will radially select all the edges in that loop without selecting the corresponding boundary loops. You can then checker-deselect them as normal. You'll have to do this for each loop area, but it still saves a ton of time compared to going into X-Ray view and box selecting the loops. MESHmachine has a feature which will let you unbevel an existing bevel; It's literally called, "Unbevel" and might be useful for these situations. KZbin really didn't want me to post this comment; It kept deleting it or just giving me errors every time I submitted it.

[@JoshGambrell]

But wouldn’t that select all the edges of that same direction/length? Seems like more of a fixer upper than anything.

[@ianmcglasham]

Excellent video. Thanks.

[@issaronow]

cool design

[@amigoface]

this is gold

[@tomislavtomaskovic2831]

as someone whos working 1 year in Blender and still feel like complete beeginer, this is amazing...ive been unwraping things wrong while it was so easy :(. Also if you could answer my questions that would be amazing. Is there any reason to make low poly if model isnt gonna be used in a game but only for portfolio..then its alright to unwrap high poly and export it to substance painter right?

[@agesofzeppelin]

Textool and Magic UV addon are way to go

[@SUKHJINDERPAL125]

Gr8 video bro From india with love 👍💕💕💕🇮🇳🇮🇳🇮🇳

[@marsmotion]

another watcher suggested bake groups to limit the ray casts between objects in marmo. does the new version not have a limit bake by mesh name option when baking? SD has that option which is nice. other than those two things shrinking your cage reduces errors. others here mentioned internally facing polys taking up space which i think does need more address with this method. perhaps selecting those faces and packing at a lower td separately would be a nice touch. some of the large masses in this model could be merged together in the low reducing internals as an option. nice video as usual. all the best to you.

[@sebbosebbo9794]

find the backing maps a nd UV unwrap part with harden normal , h.edges, etc. wieghted bevels even to low poly mesh always pain i.t.a. , not only in blender. the bl.manual is not full clear what is best workflow with these modifier activ and it cost so much time to find out whats the problem is..sometime not good enougth low p.geometry or the cage is wrong or the backing setup options are not corect or modfiers are wrong , or some uv unwraps parts must more Isolated..uargh... so full ready modeling is so hard when the but Thx for your always great help...stable as always

[@MdAbdullahAlZia]

Really you deserve a 💝

[@KRIZINKGRIN]

You are a Legend many thanks. 👊⚡

[@tiaan_va]

I see that the boolean operations cause quite a multitude of n-gons. Is that fine to have them like that?

[@JoshGambrell]

Depends what you are doing. I’d never pass this model down a VFX or TV production pipeline. I’d retopo it first or approach it at different way up front if that was what I needed it for. In terms of static assets/games/renders the topology is fine if you manage it correctly. The only slight problem here might be that pinching I mentioned on the top - I’d actually fix up that portion from scratch just because it wouldn’t take long, but it shouldn’t really cause any problems.

[@tiaan_va]

@@JoshGambrell aah okay that makes sense. I've just always been paranoid about n-gons. Have you always used a blender workflow? I only switched to blender about 2 months or so ago, I've been a Maya user for quite a while. UV unwrapping is one of the things I do miss most about Maya, it's UV tools are so nice to work with, other than that Blender Blender is starting to feel a lot nicer to work with.

[@lowaimnobrain]

@@JoshGambrell Why not for TV? Unless it's specifically going to be deformed would the ngons matter at all?

[@FadyAkramHabashy]

Thanks in advance but this helping me out and get the idea of how uv unwarppping is so bad out of my mind

[@sreedhar7266]

Thank You So much!!!!!!

[@asr59]

If you work with the UDIM workflow you won't need to have several materials for each UV set. Or is there any specific reason why you did it this way? Thanks

[@tony92506]

great video, substance video would be great though! thank you!

[@redakumaproduction]

2 quick question. Do we need To do the same (uv unwrapping make seems etc) for the High poly if we bake that texture on the low poly . I Guess i cannot texture the low poly once its baked ? And why do we care about saving space on the uv map .cant we not extend past the scare of the uv editor? Those are legit question i am just trying To understand why and what i am doing a bit better !🙇‍♂️

[@peeriehooman1696]

Just Awesome Thank you

[@saravanand8568]

Great Video Josh ...Fab Josh

[@TheDevian]

Tried to get the pdf, link said I was forbidden...

[@JoshGambrell]

Try clearing cookies or use a diff browser

[@TheDevian]

@@JoshGambrell Thanks, tried a few browsers, had to use another computer....

[@hazar357]

Josh you are great 🎉 Can you make a video about Blender 4.1's new auto-smooth system? It broke bakes and I couldn't figure out how to fix them. I'd really appreciate it.

[@SanOcelotl]

can't believe i just watched this for free

[@matamat77]

Hi josh, luv your tutorial especially using vanila, what do you think if just use quad remasher then uv unwrap from there, will the result look nice/better?

[@arashtehrani7726]

Hi Mr. josh Gambrell first of all thanks for your awesome tutorial. I've a question , would you please tell me what is your pc specs ?! specially CPU / GPU and is it important to have a high-end GPU for modeling ?! is it matter?? just for modeling (viewport lagging) or CPU can handle that?

[@tomar666]

Awesome stuff Josh, thank you :) Love what you and Ryuu are doing. Is there any way to take a look at those tires geo? I'm wondering what is your tire treads modeling workflow.

[@Michael57Coghill]

Thank you for the download

[@user-bq8pi5ck5k]

100 comments 🤘 I already subscribed to Josh, but switched on the recommendation of Grаnt 😉

[@CosplayZine]

Im kind of new and just been doing modeling for a few years but isnt this what the multires modifer is for? Not sure since i havent used it but just asking if its possible to do that instead of most of this...

[@PRFKCT]

hi josh, a beginner question why we can't apply material/texture in blender without uv unwrapping & what happens if we apply without unwrapping? just for 3D art purpose

[@JoshGambrell]

You would only need to unwrap your model if you plan to texture the asset externally. If you want to texture it procedurally (i.e. with nodes) you wouldn't have to unwrap at all, and is often what I do to save time. Manual texturing is obviously more versatile, but isn't always required.

[@user-iz4yd6ox5q]

What difference when i make car for game? Can i use multiply texture sets or it slow down my game?

[@unreasonablebastards753]

I'm a little confused, in case anybody happens to know a good answer to this question...why is it necessary to prevent UV overlap? I often see these UV Checkers used along with UV packing to "make good use of the UV space" - but I have no idea what that means, and I can't really find a good explanation. Doesn't the UV space extend infinitely in both U and V space? If so then why would 'packing' them into this square be necessary, since the texture pattern will repeat infinitely in all directions (assuming you're using a correctly seamless texture)? Is this exclusively for baking (which requires everything to be within the square)? And if so does that mean that if your model is not using baked textures/normals that UV extension beyond the square doesn't matter? (for example lots of models these days will be textured with external materials rather than through baking within blender) These concerns make sense to me for lightmaps, which need no overlap between islands...but typically you would export those as a separate UV channel anyways.

[@marsmotion]

its for baking the normals and ao into a texture. textures have limits.

[@unreasonablebastards753]

@@marsmotion Thanks. That's more or less what I suspected as above.

[@romulino]

Grant sent me here!

[@deqa]

Great tutorial, but I don't get why you separate the low poly into truck_low1 and truck_low2 when you could keep it as a singular truck_low with two UDIMs if you wanted to have equal texel density and have enough space for all the UV islands at that texel density. I guess it's because the object you made is going to be used for something that isn't a render, or a game without UDIM capability. Splitting a low poly into two pieces like that, packing and setting the scale of the UVs, only to THEN copy the texel density of the other half of the low poly and apply it it is a bit odd to me. Sure, split the low poly into two pieces if you don't have UDIM support for your model, but I think the texel density should have been defined for the top half of the model instantly, and then you can just use that texel density for the second half versus having to copy and swap texel densities like a mad man later on in the process. Great tutorial nonetheless and I could just be confused. Your Hardops one is also a killer. 👍

[@alexeytarala8483]

Thank you very much!!!!!!!

[@nonamech14]

this video shoud have 1m views

[@jesusizarracali9507]

Thanks man

[@aleksandrsorokin9715]

Hi Josh! What's in your Hard Surface UV Unwrapping in Blender course that's not in this video?

[@joaovitors.s9643]

Thanks :)

[@morfo22]

Thank you for this fantastic video! Just curious about why you use Marmoset to bake instead of doing it directly in Substance Painter. Are the normal maps generated by Marmoset better?

[@JoshGambrell]

Much much better in terms of baking all around.

[@lowaimnobrain]

personally find it hard to justify the price of additional software on top of substance. I've baked in both and the end result.. personally.. no difference.

[@marsmotion]

@@lowaimnobrain its seeing the bake mesh cage and scaling it per object and painting it custom in and out thats worth the cost. so basically it can solve bake problems that sd cant since its one setting only in sp for all the thing.

[@plastic2666]

ty

[@billelouili3462]

Thank you for the tutorial but i have a question why didn't you use substance for baking the high mesh into the low one?

[@JoshGambrell]

Substance bakes tend to be lower quality, but they would both work.

[@billelouili3462]

@@JoshGambrell thx

[@Alexander_S_K]

Any reason you prefer Zen UV addon over UV toolkit 2? Is there something the latter is missing?

[@JoshGambrell]

Never used the latter.

[@ShakuganJkeee]

hello, love your tutorials! Can u help me with one 1-bevel issue? After unwrapping my 1-bevel LP model, i always meet one problem - some corners overlapping each other, couse its UV map ruin after apply 1-bevel. How u fix this problem without reunwrapping? Couse of this issue, after normal baking, terrible shading in this overlapping corners =( couse of this, i use no-bevel LP on this time

[@emilalibekov]

Do you have an answer to this question by this time? Do we have to apply bevel mod after doing unwraping?

[@ShakuganJkeee]

@@emilalibekov no i dont, just doing unwraping another way (more handmade)

[@Duuude9448]

thx!