In this Blender 2.5 video tutorial we introduce you to the concepts and methods of UV unwrapping. Using three progressively more complex primitive mesh objects you are shown the basics of unwrapping, how to set seams, how to reduce stretching, how to assign materials to use the UVs and more.
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Discussion
70 Responses to “Introduction to UV Unwrapping”Leave a Comment
awesome!
Jonathan, in this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNcEAnY2IzU the person uses an xbox controller in blender for a game. he uses some script, but does not list it. i was wondering if you could find out a way do this. this would be so awesome, my friends want me to make a game, and they were hoping it could be for xbox. i use a mac, so xna is out of the question, thanks, this would help me alot.
Getting your game on Xbox probly isn’t gonna happen without xna. You can use Xbox and PS3 controllers on the computer, though. The Blender game engine isn’t going to be quite enough if you really want to make a game. Look into Unity, there should be a mac version of that.
where is the video? :O
if you click on the link, it will bring you to the youtube video
the uv unwrapping tutorial. i don’t see it in firefox. :/
If you use firefox, problem is “flashblock” or something lie this.
Vimeo not like bloking flash player, so just turn off for a this time
flashblock or just add vimeo to the whitelist of flashblock.
I hope to have helped.
Sorry for bad english.
Hey soy de venezuela… y me gustaria saber si podria hacer videotutoriales en español sobre tus videos… que me han ayudado muchisimo… pero para explicarlos en español…. Espero tu respuesta muchos saludos y exitos…
tendras que escribirles en ingles colega. aunque eso de ponerlos en español es una idea interesante
Ayudame a contactar con el amigo… ya yo tengo algunos tutoriales en youtrube y en mi pagina… pero me gustaria mucho poder tradcir sus tutoriales… y podre nombrarlos en mis tutoriales.. a el y a andre price… porfavor..
Hola,
Henrik tiene razón en que usted tendrá más suerte obtener una respuesta si la pregunta en Inglés. Además, este tipo de preguntas podría ser mejor ser consultado sobre http://www.cgcookie.zendesk.com, CGCookie del sitio de soporte. No puedo responder a tu pregunta a mí mismo, pero Wes se menciona en el sitio de soporte que “Usted es bienvenido para ligarse a cualquiera de nuestros tutoriales en la red CG Cookie, pero le pedimos que por favor no incrustar o sede de los videos en su sitio “. Sin embargo, por favor no dude en enviar su pregunta / idea allí. =)
Buena suerte y gracias por tu interés!
-Patrick
—————–
Hey there,
Henrik is right in that you’ll have more luck getting an answer if you ask the question in English. Also, questions like these might be better off asked on http://www.cgcookie.zendesk.com, CGCookie’s support site. I can’t answer your question myself, but Wes does mention on the support site that “You are welcome to link to any of our tutorials on the CG Cookie network, but we ask that you please don’t embed or host the videos on your site”. However, please feel free to send in your question/ idea there. =)
Good luck and thanks for your interest!
-Patrick
I was too lazy to open Firefox because Safari was open and the video wouldn’t work it just showed the preview picture with no link or anything but it works fine in Firefox though… None of the other tuts work in Safari either. I haven’t downloaded anything or changed the settings since last night (when it was working fine) i can’t seem to figure out what’s wrong any suggestions?
Heya – Are you meaning the embedded tutorial videos above won’t play in Safari for you? Are you on a Mac or PC? Will help me troubleshoot any CSS.
Yep they won’t play it won’t even link to Vimeo
All it shows is what looks like the opening frame. Running Vista 32bit not sure which version of Safari but it’s fairly recent not older then a month or two.
Mine Works Just fine, Im using a macbook pro and running the latest version of Safari on it.
UV layout can be tedious but it’s one of the most important things to know … Thank you …
You sir are my hero for doing this!
-Sam
I am currently in the middle of a crocodile texturing has been very complex, with your tutorial I clarified a few things. Thanks for sharing knowledge!
I love it so little so vital such great tutorial .
I love it so little so vital such great tutorial .
I love it so little so vital such great tutorial .
I love it so little so vital such great tutorial .
I love it so little so vital such great tutorial .
I love it so little so vital such great tutorial .
I love it so little so vital such great tutorial .
I love it so little so vital such great tutorial .
I love it so little so vital such great tutorial .
I love it so little so vital such great tutorial .
I love it so little so vital such great tutorial .
perfect tutorial – really helps to consolidate and confirm the UV side of things.
Is there a best practice for UV unwrapping and then adding a subsurf modifier?
Quite often find that the extra geometry in the subsurf ruins the the unwrap.
@T-Mac137:
Thanks you very much, your video! Can I have your test file, please?
oh, sorry. that wasn’t me, that was another guy, he didn’t put the script anywhere, and i was hoping jonathan could find out how to do it.
This was just what I needed.
I would love to se more of this kind.
Its not particulary fun, but very useful.
(Same applyes to the car rig you did some days ago)
Thanks for your efforts.
Thanks! I would definitely like to see an advanced tutorial on this; Some tips&tricks and dos&donts on how to handle more complex meshes.
Nice Tutorial, thanks! 3ds Max has an option to display overlaping faces in the UV Viewport, does Blender has something similar?
Yay! You used my feature, the CTRL+TAB menu in the UV/Image editor! (Note: “My feature”, not “One of my features”
) Also, if you turn UV/Edit select mode syncing on, the menu changes to match the edit mode one.
Oh that is very cool, I was not aware of that. Did you develop it?
-Jonathan
Hey soy de venezuela… y me gustaria saber si podria hacer videotutoriales en español sobre tus videos… que me han ayudado muchisimo… pero para explicarlos en español…. Espero tu respuesta muchos saludos y exitos…
Yeah I ported it to Blender 2.5 (The mesh select CTRL+TAB menu was in the UV Editor in 2.4x), it was a feature request from someone. 1 line of C, ~40 lines of Python.
Thank you! Very basic but needed.
Excellent video. Thank you.
Thanks Jonathan, there is always something
Man everytime I think a Tut about this and that would be nice, one or two days after I find it on blendercookie.com
Just searched the Internet for nice UV-Unwrapping Tuts.. thanks alot!
thank you so much i hate doing uv but that strech tool helps me out loads
I hope u can make advance tut about uv mapping,have basic and advance one are perfect learning,*srry bd eng
You can find a more advanced UV Unwrapping tutorial here that covers the unwrapping of a full female character: http://www.blendercookie.com/2010/03/02/unwrapping-a-female-character/
-Jonathan
Great work once again.
This may be in 1000+ tutorials, buy you once again broke it to the most fundamental elements. As always your tutorials are top notch.
Hey I’m from Venezuela … and I would like to know if I could make video tutorial in Spanish on your videos … they have helped me a lot … but … to explain in Spanish. I hope your answer many health and success …
My English is certainly a little bad..
Jonathan:I saw that you select edges, by loop selection or one by one. Did you now that you can select path of edges with ctrl (in edge select mode)?
Thanks so much Jonathan! I’ve been waiting for a 2.5 tutorial on UV Unwrapping for quite a while! Your tutorials are such a help to us, please keep up the good work!
-Lace
While using blender 2.49, and holding the ctrl key + mmb I was able to move the scene right and left. Also holding the shift key + mmb the scence will move up and down. 2.5 doesn’t seem to operate this way what are my options?
I don’t believe this functionality has been ported to 2.5… I could be wrong though. I didn’t find a way to do it while testing just now.
-Jonathan
yeah michael, that was my first question when I switched to 2.5. I sorely missed that for several months. But now I don’t even remember what it was like. You’ll eventually get used to it and I even like it better this way now.
OOPS!I misread that! Michael, that still works buddy. Ctrl+Scroll for left-right, and shift+scroll for up-down. I’m using 2.56 official.
Is pinning too old school to mention here?
I always found it such a great method of manually correcting stretching and such,
and I still use it on the odd occasion. =P
Although I can’t deny the usefulness of the automated methods demonstrated here either, not to mention how they allow one to streamline their workflow better.
Great tutorial though, it’s refresing to look at the basic stuff more in-depth every now and then, because I for one occasionally slip up, get sloppy and forget some important step when it comes to detailed polishing work like this (e.g. the whole removing of distortions, using the test grid, etc. — I usually tend to just mark seams and unwrap and be done with it =D).
Hi guys just a quick tip, if you want to select a part which you line it with seems it has to be completely a full part with seems like the case of the sphere in the tutorial to select for example the top ,the middle or the bottom part you have first to be on face mode select one face and hit “L” it works just if you select a full mesh in edit mode but if you try with vertexes or edge mode it won’t work
you get the idea
remember face mode and hit L
and happy blending
Hey… the video isn’t working for me. It’s not playing or anything, there are no options to play or pause or watch on vimeo or anything like that on the video. It just shows one picture, which looks like the first frame of the video. I’m running on Windows 7 64 bit, and I’m using Google Chrome. The strange thing is, I watched this video yesterday and it worked fine. So something happened since then, and it’s probably happened to all of your videos as well (I’ve tried a few others, too). I’m sure you already know this, though. If not, then I guess it’s my computer…
Nope, it’s neither actually. I went to CGCookie’s vimeo channel, and none of the videos worked there either. So, it’s either a problem with vimeo, or a problem with your channel (or, again, a problem with my computer). And it’s not my web browser either. I’ve tried firefox, chrome, and explorer, and it doesn’t work on any of them.
Okay, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a problem in vimeo, and it hasn’t been fixed yet :-/ So it’s not anything you did after all
Hi, Jonathan! Your tutorials are absolutely the best, and\ni’m thinking you may be one of the best teachers i’ve ever had.\nThanks so much for your frequent posts. They are really breaking\nthe ice for me. I recently found a video on Youtube of a new\ntexturing feature for an earlier version of blender 2.5 and it just\nseems incredibly powerful and useful. Here’s the video\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNd54jgesgk . The guy who added the\nfeature made the video and demo’d it very well but didn’t really\nexplain how to get it working and I can’t find anything on the web\nabout it or get a reply from the OP himself. I’m looking to use the\nfeature with photoshop, but can’t seem to get it to open like i’d\nhoped. I click the button and nothing happens. Sometimes my\ncomputer tells me that Blender has stopped responding for a few\nseconds, but that’s about as eventful as it gets. Haha. I went into\nmy user pref. and linked my photoshop.exe file as my image editor,\nbut this doesn’t work unfortunately. I am using version 2.55.0\nr32738, and for me the button seems to be called the ‘Quick Edit’\nbutton instead of ‘View Edit’ as in the video. Perhaps it isn’t\nimplemented in my version, even though it is more recent, but I\ncan’t help but think that there is just something i’m missing. Any\nadvice, suggestions, or even a tutorial on this feature would be\ngreatly appreciated. Whether you find time to reply to my post or\nnot, thanks again for the education you’ve provided for me and\nothers. You are the best tutorialist I know. Tutorialist isn’t a\nword, but if it were, your picture would be next to it. Keep doing\nwhat you do.
Thanks, Jonathan. So much again.
Unwrapping is a nightmare in Max and this seems so easy in Blender. I was going to request an advanced tut but you provided the link.
Thanks!
(Jonathan’s Quote:)
You can find a more advanced UV Unwrapping tutorial here that covers the unwrapping of a full female character: http://www.blendercookie.com/2010/03/02/unwrapping-a-female-character/
Hi, I have some questions: how can I move the camera in the UV editor? Also, is it possible to drag-select with mouse? And finally, is it possible to move multiple is
I’ve been looking for exactly this tutorial for ages…exactly what I needed. Thank you.
Thanks for the tutorial! One question that may be obvious to experienced users but has been causing me grief is the edge selection. When you unwrap the cube you then start selecting edges to mark the seams… I have followed each step but you do not mention how to select the seam itself….. I have the cube selected, am in Edit mode, have Edge Select Mode toggled but still can not right click on an edge…. is this another Blender shortcut needed like click three different keys … stand on my head turn backwards and pray type manouver
.
THANKS…. sarcasm intended in the spirit of fun… not nastiness!
Sarcasm is always good! Helps to break the ice
Have you perhaps switched your selection mouse over to the Left Mouse button? Do you have any trouble selecting vertices in Vertex Selection mode?
-Jonathan
Wow, this really simplified this process for me. Thanks for the Tutorial.
This is exactly what I was looking for, thanks guys.
Hey John, I’m really at loss here. What I see on 6:10 in your video that if you click U + unwrap after making a seam that the pattern should be skewed/stretched. For me, the pattern dissapears. I’ve been trying it again and again and I can’t seem to find a way to make it come out like it did at 6:13 of your video. I’m using 2.63 and I was wondering if you can lend any tips on how to make it work? Thanks.
I’m having a lot of issues unwrapping things like cylinders, which instead of giving straight islands for the sides, end up very distorted. For example if I just use a basic cylinder mesh and mark seams, it unwraps the sides to a slight zig zag shape. And with a slightly edited, higher poly tire shape, it tapers off and is a bit rough. I have no idea what’s going on. The sides should be totally even, but it seems like they are attracted to the end caps in some weird way. Is there anything I can do?
Hi Byron,
When you unwrap, immediately press F6 and choose “Angle Based” as the unwrap method. That should give you more consistent results for geometric forms like a cylinder.
if someone like me stuck looking for “Textured Solid” checkbox, the answer is: it is not avaible when Cycles Render is choosen, so go back to Blender Render..