“Painless Organic Unwrapping” by Bill Quillinan
Fig 16 Exporting the UV Map
If you are not unwrapping a head, and aren’t sure where the trouble spots will be in your mesh, mark a few obvious seams, unwrap the object, and take a look at the resulting UV map. You should get a fairly good idea of where you need to start. Make sure to unmark all seams before moving on.
Face Loop Select Tool. 3D Window, Edit Mode, Face Select mode. Hold Alt while RMB clicking near an edge of a face. The Face Loop Select Tool will select all faces that are part of the loop going through that edge. This is a toggle, so RMB clicking again will deselect the faces. To select or deselect multiple face loops, hold Shift+Alt while RMB clicking.
Select Faces. 3D Window, Edit Mode, Face Select mode. The key word here is faces, plural. To select more than one face at a time, hold down the Shift key while RMB clicking on the faces. This is a toggle, so RMB clicking on a selected face will deselect it.
Select All Faces. 3D Window, Edit Mode or UV Face Select Mode. The key word here is ALL. To select all faces type a. This is a toggle, so if any faces are selected, it will deselect everything.
Unwrap Selected Faces. 3D Window, UV Face Select Mode. The key word is Selected. If nothing is selected, nothing happens when you unwrap. Type u to get the UV Calculation submenu and choose your poison. Most of the selections are an attempt to automate the production of clean UV meshes. This tutorial uses LCSM Unwrapping, or plain Unwrap in later Blender versions. or UV Image Editor Window. Type e. Confirm the unwrap by pressing the pop-up Unwrap button.
Select the Map. UV Image Editor Window. Besides using a to select all, hovering the mouse cursor over a connected UV map and typing l (lower case L) will select “linked” vertices.
Grab, Rotate and Scale use the same hot keys [g, r, s] in the UV Editor Window as in the 3D Window. The main difference is in axes, since the UV map is 2D, x is left and right, y is up and down.
Full Screen Mode. With the mouse cursor in any window. Shift+Space bar OR Ctrl+UpArrow OR Ctrl+DownArrow to change the moused window to full screen. These are toggles, use any of them to switch back to window mode. Mix and match, it’s all good.
Pin Vertices. UV Image Editor Window. With vertices selected type p. Or use the UV Image Editor Window header menu UVs>>Pin.
Add New UV Image. UV Image Editor Window. In the Header menus, Image>>New (Hot key Alt+n)
(c) Bill Quillinan, qwq@juno.com
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