How to get BEAUTIFUL packs in Blender (UV Workflow)

UV Packing is incredibly important to optimize texture resolution and not waste UV space. This video will show you a quick way to achieve that!
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[@mobilelast1715]

I’m just browsing through addons for texture handling, and this was a great tutorial. Densely packed islands can cause bleeding issues with mipmapping. In addition to padding, you may also want to snap islands to pixels (“UV” -> “Snap to Pixels” in vanilla Blender) and set texture resolution to power of two. It can help the texture downscaling problems a little. Usually mipmapping errors occur on small textures that are used on distant objects. So the bleeding is rarely visible. With emissive textures, however, the bleeding can cause very noticeable glitches that are hard to track down or even reproduce.

[@weightednormal3682]

Every seam passing through a vertex will double its count. Fewer seams will reduce the cost for models in game. You have optimized the UV space but understand there is a tradeoff here with the large number of islands.

[@jeffreyspinner9720]

Hey, I use you a lot!

[@fyiicheckforspies]

If your model is mirrored you can save a ton of UV space by splitting the model in half and UV unwrapping half of it. When you apply the mirror modifier, the islands from both sides will be stacked on top of each other perfectly. This means it'll be textured the same on both sides but the texture will have much higher quality texel density

[@benjaminfranklinstyl]

Sounds interesting, have to try it out

[@BBoysLibya]

Yeah its a good idea but what abt the lightmaps ?

[@everythingsource3807]

You’ll have a seam down the middle

[@michaeljburt]

@@everythingsource3807 This is correct and something you need to be very careful about. Depending on how the normal data is interpreted, you will often get a seam (OpenGL swizzle vs DirectX or Vulkan). I believe the issue only exists in OpenGL rendering but I could be wrong I learned this the hard way after using a mirror for an entire character modeling, baking normal maps, etc. only to import in game and have a huge seam down the middle

[@crimson-foxtwitch2581]

@@BBoysLibyathe mirroring trick you don’t do with environment objects.

[@marcfuchs6938]

I am not sure, how well this will serve for organic content (characters and the like), but certainly keeping this video saved and will try it out. We are not only blessed with a fantastic 3D program for free, but with great free tutorials about it.

[@chidorirasenganz]

square UVs are commonly used in anime style 3d

[@thetruestar6348]

Square map is the go to for characters in stylized 3D

[@jezelf2774]

Great Video . One note - putting your seam lines in places where you see them the least is a good idea/practice. So for those wheels, if the seam was on the inside at the back hidden, or obscured by other geometry then any texturing you do in the 'forward facing' areas most likely to be viewed, has less to zero chance of showing pixels that don't line up (unless you are texturing with symmetry or it's all 1 flat colour). Any pixel colour variation over seam lines will become exaggerated the lower your resolution. i.e if your working file is 4k and a game res has to be 1k - or lower (for mobile games), then there's a chance those ends won't look seamless. Might be in your guide - thanks for that btw! great job.

[@WatThaDeuce]

Nice video, just one caveat: 'The #1 goal... is to use as much space... as possible.' I would add to this 'without causing distortion/stretching.' Straightening the UVs in this way will cause distortion, which may or may not be negligible.

[@thomaspasieka1311]

Not only that but "Texel Density" is actually far more important. Unless you don't care for even resolution on your textures.

[@WatThaDeuce]

@@thomaspasieka1311 That's a good point. I think he mentions in the video that the add-on has a parameter to normalize texel density in some way.

[@thomaspasieka1311]

@@WatThaDeuce I must have missed that. Of course it depends on the model/case but personally I find an even resolution far more important. You can get away with great discrepancies in texel resolution if the model is never inspected up close by the player. Mobile games are also a bit more forgiving in that regard.

[@WatThaDeuce]

@@thomaspasieka1311 Yea I always adjust UVs for texel density first, then start packing. If there's too much empty space then I'll atlas the object with a couple of other small ones.

[@vinnypassmore5657]

Great advice from two great and competent artists who's love for and skill with Blender shows in every piece of content shared. Nice job guys, as per usual, thanks for sharing.

[@MrGTAmodsgerman]

Also to save up some a lot of UV space is to overlay identical faces when its possible. Lets say you have a circle and you have a repeating pattern, you should try to mirror and UV unwrap the object in all directions right up on modeling to get a very small UV island that can then use a higher amount of pixels repeating all around in a circle. Hard to explain, but in case of the example in the video here, the UV circle island shouln't be cut only at one section (as its shown here), instead it gets cut into many identical pieces that get overlayed like an UDIM. I experienced that way of UV mapping on 3D models made by Rockstar Games. Just so you know what level this comes from.

[@deqa]

The problem is then you imply that those overlaying UV's share the same texture data, but otherwise it's sound. Wouldn't see how this would work for objects that need different texture data around a circle, like an AO bake that bakes different shadow data around different parts of the circle.

[@MrGTAmodsgerman]

@@deqa Well yea that is a problem. But in my example i was speaking about like an car tyre. That's why i said "if possible" in my comment. But on a car tyre you don't want different shadow look on the bake on a car tyre, because it will move obviously which then won't fit the light direction. It obviously only works if you have stuff in your texture that just repeats. So on some textures you better avoid using a AO bake if you want effient UV map while also getting better texture quality. In case of an car tyre i may would just bake it once with the car tyre UV islands not overlaying, just all on new tiles (UDIMS) and then after bake, put it back to the overlaying look so you have just a consistant and none bad looking bake while also having a efficient UV map. I hope you understand what i mean 😂 Now i really wonder what will R* do with GTA 6 and all the PBR workflow.

[@thomaspasieka1311]

Actually the most important thing should be "Equal Texel Density" while using the most of the uv space possible. So having some spare space is actually not uncommon or wrong.

[@IGarrettI]

This guy game devs

[@thomaspasieka1311]

@@IGarrettI Yeah that's what I do for a living for the past 20 years :)

[@IGarrettI]

@@thomaspasieka1311 go on, gives us some tutorials 😄

[@thomaspasieka1311]

@@IGarrettI If I only had more time on my hands :)

[@IGarrettI]

@@thomaspasieka1311 ah I understand :(

[@magnusrexus]

You need space for dithering in game you will get textured edge bleeding when the texture resolution is stepped down

[@mr1357989]

yeah i was gonna say this, needs more margin space, like .007 instead of the .003 he has it set at

[@SendItSoftware]

So I was just searching for UV packing and stumbled across your channel, and it cracked me up on stream because you have the same name as me 😂

[@WolverineMKD]

Hey josh glad to see your still uploading great content old time lurker here keep it up!

[@unfa00]

I haven't thought about this - thanks!

[@jorgewyclif5687]

outsanding video, truly a life saver

[@3DWithLairdWT]

I'm so happy I've found this channel. Took my models to the next level for sure

[@hiddenvoid]

Thanks. Nice to see that I am not the only one with this strange uv-squares bug. :)

[@Shadrax2904]

Finally, the button "Make it cool" appeared. It is high time.

[@FlightDeckMagazin]

Thank you for this great tutorial.

[@shadow777explorer]

And you end up with a seam in every circular piece of mesh... plus distortion in many areas, Nice! It is indeed a very cool tool for ones arsenal, but doesn't work in every scenario.

[@altwhisper6920]

Not new for me but still thank you for you do. Your lessons are great. By the way, I use UV toolkit (it's paid) to straighten islands. There are no annoying bugs when use straight. I think in Zen UV (also paid) too.

[@NightVisionOfficial]

There's UVP 3 Now! P.S. Zen UV have the straighten for island

[@Bwern]

I dont understand why blender doesnt purchase some of these addons. Like the packamster pro seems like it should be in base blender

[@Bwern]

@surprisedpikachu if they paid enough, ofc

[@additiveartificer9365]

OH this will work with UV packmaster Nicely

[@LycheeFast]

thank you so much for this video ! Also your free hard surface unwrapping guide's not working anymore, do you delete it ?

[@BasicallyAnArtist]

Thanks a lot for showing us this. 👍🏾

[@SqualidsargeStudios]

Have fun with overlapping textures

[@sidney6582]

Very misleading to not at any point turn on UV stretch, or even to comment on that problem

[@mikerusby]

the problem with packing this way is that it pays no heed to the actual objects ie Blender will just pack for example the wheel all over the uv layout and not pay an regard to its location. what would be nice would be island groups so it only packs objects via proximity I just do each object 1 by one pack it , then do the same for the rest so you have a bunch of big uv square layouts for each object Then I will manually edit

[@evoccs183]

Awesome video, really helped me out!

[@ramiro6687]

thanks josh

[@bhuhuhuhuhbuhuh]

Hello, I was wondering if this workflow would work with overlapping UVs for optimization? This might allow for a lot more space lenience for things that are textured the same way. Would this allow for texel density?

[@carlosbernal4629]

how can I avoid unwrapping distortions when straightening the UVs in circular meshes

[@WatThaDeuce]

It's an inevitable tradeoff between packing/distortion/texel density

[@abdullahahsan4942]

hi nice video and i always want my uv unwrap like this its look so clean. but when i try to straight my uv i get this stretching color change when i open display stretch from overlays. can u tell how to overcome this problem.😊

[@patrickaherton3906]

Hello. I don't understand what this tool offer. It pack to the same texture resolution, so it will be no any advantages to reduce GPU memory usage. Is any tool exists to do the same, but pack and reduce texture usage and resolution. Also after using this tool all uv mapping is off from mesh and uv is broken. How to reapply new uv coordinates back to mesh? Thanks.

[@lithium534]

Is there a simple way to overlap UV's that will have the same texture? As manually aligning them is a pain and never perfect.

[@TehPascu]

Yes! In the UV editor, select the parts that are gonna be mirrored, press G and press 1. That will move the selected faces 1 unit to the left (essentially, they're on the same spot, but it's way more clean and can avoid possible errors in baking and game engines :D). Also, if the mirrored part comes from a 'Mirror' modifier, there's options below the modifier that allow you to do modify the uv's of the mirrored parts

[@lithium534]

@@TehPascu Thank you for the tip. I'll have to try it out. I haven't see anything on this. Maybe everyone already know but me. :p

[@mktacuara]

Is there a way to pack only select faces and not the entire model in one go?

[@kamillatocha]

love using uv pack master even for simple stuff cus blender sucks at filling UV holes

[@Cyber_Kriss]

01:57 I dunno about you, but I downloaded the file on Github and installed it, but Blender doesn't show it in the add-ons list (although it confirms the install) Any idea why it happens ?

[@destructorestelargalactico7345]

so far... as a newby, I think the UV unwrapping is the most difficult area from 3D art... at least I find it very counter-intuitive, there is never enough advices to learn UV unwrapping

[@kernsanders3973]

As a person who has done 3D for quite a few years as a side hobby, UV unwrapping is still a bit of a hill. Although I mostly became reliant on auto unwrappers which is not ideal. Tutorials like these are gold to get a handle on it, I would suggest to tackle this subject early, of course when you feel ready but def as soon as possible to avoid putting off for years like I did lol.

[@destructorestelargalactico7345]

@Jade for me it is a complete nightmare depending on the 3D model and texture you need to apply... I ever was doing the blender guru chair tutorial, and found very difficult to avoid distorted areas of the wood texture on the chair UV map... it was a model where the straigh line of the wood needs to be curved in some areas but streight again in others

[@AAhmou]

@Jade Both are hell for me... UV unrapping being slightly easier than texture painting.

[@pineappleparty1624]

I'm just mad I didn't know about this before lol.

[@caruya]

Is normalize island a good idea always? Wouldn't it be more efficient use of UV if you give those areas that have less visibility low texel density?

[@WatThaDeuce]

There's no one-size solution, of course. If you want lower resolution on some parts because it suits the needs of your project then go for it

[@SputniksArmy]

Normalize the uvs that you will primarily see, and scale down the UVs that are either completely occluded, low visibility, or rarely seen.

[@praveenb-xr]

how to install that standars uvpackmaster addon ..i downloaded windows exe , but how can i use that inside bleder

[@teukuaulia4270]

how did u show the uv while not selecting all the faces?

[@popattara]

You need to made more space between uv island it not like this use 8k texture.

[@CGSeb-scifi]

The space is proportional to the resolution. On 8K you will put more pixel margin than on 4K 😉

[@casualguy6354]

I got a gift of 30$ for Christmas and I want to spend it on blender bros stuff so should I get a Patreon 1 tier and blender bros coaching community or the mech course

[@CharlExMachina]

How do you auto unwrap every time you add a seam?

[@dislikecounter6392]

Why didnt you link to UV squares in the description... lmao...

[@johnnizito]

How can i select the uv and zoom in the mesh?

[@husseinabdulla]

Why doesn't anyone explain the installation of the addon!! I do not know why this add-on is different in the installation method for all add-ons

[@rishabhsharma472]

why we can use smart uv unwrap

[@DiegoSilva-zm3ke]

This kind of uv works fine with mipmaps?

[@WatThaDeuce]

Will depend on padding and how low-res the mip maps get.

[@Butterbilk]

Not really an accurate demonstration of the straightening tip if you're comparing the packs from Blender's native packer and UVPackmaster. A lot of the density is coming from the better packing algorithm. Should show the pack before and after straightening both times using the same packer.

[@andreyu6440]

thk u we love u :'(

[@chaosordeal294]

If your model isn't in quads, you should have made it into quads.

[@AllExistence]

In the end, it's just an ad.

[@alexiselliott2995]

The FREE Hard Surface Unwrapping Guide is no longer available.

[@nobocks]

Sometimes had the feeling all of that should be automatic. Especially when you modify something and then do all UV unwrap again. Big lost of time :(

[@EBDeveloper]

The #1 rule of UV Mapping is ensuring no unwanted distortion. Maximizing UV Space is only important in certain industries. You should label your video "realtime art" as this only matters in game art. ALso, you should hide seems behind other geo when possible. .. I skipped through, unsure why I bothered,,

[@HalkerVeil]

Squares being smaller means LESS resolution... Unless you mean making others smaller so the rest have more space.

[@EatuopLyreqzgj-f5l]

Jones Mark Taylor Michelle Garcia Helen

[@D-K-C]

Ъ

[@remusveritas739]

I have a question: WHERE THE FUCK ARE VIDEOS THAT ARE ACTUALLY FOR BEGINNERS AND EXPLAIN THE BASIC PRICIPLE; WHERE TO KLICK TO DO WHAT ALL "BEGGINER" TUTORIALS START ANYWHERE HOW IS ANYBODY SUPPOSED TO LEARN THIS SHIT?????????

[@juniornxumalo3225]

don't get angry at the video brother 😂 you aren't searching properly , that's all . type 'Blender Guru' into your search bar and do his doughnut tutorial

[@mrCetus]

You need space for dithering in game you will get textured edge bleeding when the texture resolution is stepped down