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User Guide

Automatic UV Unwrapping | Substance 3D Painter

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Substance 3D Painter

Substance 3D Painter

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  1. Substance 3D home
  2. Home
  3. Getting Started
    1. Getting Started overview
    2. Activation and licenses
    3. System requirements
    4. Project creation
    5. Export
      1. Export overview
      2. Export window
        1. Export window overview
        2. Export settings
        3. Output templates
        4. List of exports
      3. Output templates
        1. Output templates overview
        2. Default Output templates
          1. Default output templates
          2. Predefined output templates
          3. USD PBR Metal Roughness Preset
        3. Creating Output templates
    6. Glossary
  4. Interface
    1. Interface overview
    2. Assets
      1. Assets overview
      2. Navigation
      3. Customizing the layout
      4. Filter by path
      5. Saved searches
      6. Advanced search queries
      7. Adding a new library
      8. Sub-library tab
    3. Substance 3D Assets
    4. Color picker
    5. Display settings
      1. Display settings overview
      2. Environment settings
      3. Camera settings
      4. Viewport settings
    6. History
    7. Layer stack
      1. Layer stack overview
      2. Creating layers
      3. Managing layers
      4. Masking and effects
      5. Blending modes
      6. Layer instancing
      7. Geometry mask
    8. Main menu
      1. Main menu overview
      2. File menu
      3. Edit menu
      4. Mode menu
      5. Window menu
      6. Viewport menu
      7. Plugins menu
      8. Help menu
    9. Project configuration
    10. Properties
    11. Settings
      1. Settings overview
      2. General preferences
      3. Shortcuts
      4. Libraries configuration
    12. Shader settings
      1. Shader settings overview
      2. Updating a shader
    13. Texture Set
      1. Texture Set overview
      2. Texture Set list
      3. Texture Set settings
      4. Texture Set reassignment
    14. Toolbars
    15. Viewport
      1. Viewport overview
      2. 2D view
      3. 3D view
      4. Camera management
    16. Miscellaneous
      1. Sliders
      2. Log
      3. Update checker
  5. Painting
    1. Painting overview
    2. Paint tools
      1. Paint tool overview
      2. Paint brush
      3. Eraser
      4. Projection
      5. Polygon fill
      6. Smudge tool
      7. Clone Tool
      8. Quick mask
    3. Path tools
      1. Path tool overview
      2. Paint along path
      3. Ribbon path
      4. Filled path
      5. Erase along path
      6. Smudge along path    
    4. Straight line   
    5. Lazy mouse 
    6. Symmetry
      1. Symmetry overview
      2. Mirror symmetry
      3. Radial symmetry
    7. Fill projections
      1. Fill projections overview
      2. Fill (match per UV Tile)
      3. UV projection
      4. Tri-planar projection
      5. Planar projection
      6. Spherical projection
      7. Cylindrical projection
      8. Warp projection
    8. Presets
      1. Presets overview
      2. Creating and saving presets
      3. Creating particles presets
        1. Creating particles overview
        2. Installing the particle editor
        3. Overview of the particle editor
        4. Creating a new particle script
      4. Photoshop brush presets
        1. Photoshop brush presets overview
        2. Exporting Brush Presets from Photoshop
        3. Importing Photoshop Brush Presets
        4. Photoshop Brush Parameters Compatibility
    9. Dynamic strokes
      1. Dynamic strokes overview
      2. Enabling Dynamic Stroke feature
      3. Dynamic Stroke Performances
      4. Creating custom Dynamic Strokes
    10. Advanced channel painting
      1. Channel painting overview
      2. Ambient Occlusion
      3. Flow Map
      4. Height Map
      5. Normal Map
    11. Vector graphic (.svg & .ai)
    12. Text resource
  6. Effects
    1. Effects overview
    2. Generator
    3. Paint
    4. Fill
    5. Levels
    6. Compare Mask
    7. Filter
    8. Anchor Point
  7. Baking
    1. Baking overview
    2. How to bake mesh maps
    3. Mesh map settings
    4. Baking visualization settings
  8. Content
    1. Creating custom effects
      1. Creating custom effects overview
      2. Generic filter
      3. Channel specific filter
      4. Generators
      5. Mesh map
      6. Mesh based input
      7. User data
    2. Importing assets
      1. Adding resources via drag and drop
      2. Adding resources via the import window
      3. Adding content on the hard drive
      4. Receiving assets from other Substance 3D applications
  9. Features
    1. Automatic resource update
    2. Automatic UV Unwrapping
    3. Physical size
    4. Smart Materials and Masks
    5. Subsurface Scattering
      1. Subsurface Scattering overview
      2. Enabling Subsurface in a Project
      3. Subsurface Parameters
      4. Subsurface Material Type
    6. Dynamic Material Layering
    7. UV Reprojection
    8. UV Tiles
      1. UV Tiles overview
      2. Image Sequence
    9. Color Management
      1. Color management overview
      2. Color management with Adobe ACE - ICC
      3. Color management with OpenColorIO
    10. Post Processing
      1. Post Processing overview
      2. Color correction
      3. Depth of Field
      4. Glare
      5. Lens Distortion
      6. Tone Mapping
      7. Vignette
      8. Color Profile
    11. Iray Renderer
      1. Iray Renderer overview
      2. Iray Settings
      3. Viewer and MDL Settings
    12. Plugins
      1. Plugins overview
      2. Autosave
      3. Resources Updater
    13. Sparse Virtual Textures
    14. Custom Shaders
    15. SpaceMouse® by 3Dconnexion
    16. Universal Scene Description (USD)
    17. Send to
  10. Technical Support
    1. Performance Guidelines
      1. Performance guidelines overview
      2. Mesh and UV setup
      3. Layer management
      4. Project resources and settings
      5. Conflict with background applications
      6. GPU VRAM and Drivers
    2. Configuring Pens and Tablets
    3. Exporting the log file
    4. Exporting a DXDiag
    5. Technical issues
      1. GPU Issues
        1. Crash when working with overclocked GPU
        2. Forcing the external GPU on Mac OS
        3. GPU drivers compatibility
        4. GPU drivers crash with long computations (TDR crash)
        5. GPU has outdated drivers
        6. GPU is not recognized
        7. GPU is not recognized and is mentionned as GDI Generic
        8. Issues with Nvidia GPUs on recent Mac OS versions
        9. Multi/Bi-GPU
        10. Running on integrated GPU
        11. Painter doesn't start on the right GPU
      2. Startup Issues
        1. Application failed to start because of Qt
        2. Crash or freeze during startup
        3. Software conflicts
      3. Rendering Issues
        1. Artifacts and glitches on Mac OS with Custom GPUs
        2. Blocky artifacts appear on textures in the viewport
        3. Mesh appears pink in the viewport
        4. Mesh flash to white when moving camera
        5. Some HDPI scaling values are not working
        6. Viewport appears broken or unresponsive on Ubuntu
      4. Stability Issues
        1. Crash during export
        2. Crash when opening or saving a file
        3. Crash while baking
        4. Crash with low virtual memory
        5. Windows Blue Screens
      5. Miscellaneous Issues
        1. Corrupted texture error message
        2. Shelf resources are gone after 7.2 update
        3. Error there is no disk in the drive
        4. Error with missing api-ms-crt dll
        5. Impossible to drag and drop files into the shelf
        6. Impossible to use the ALT keyboard shortcut on Linux
        7. Assets (or shelf) previews are empty
    6. Workflow Issues
      1. Export Issues
        1. My exported opacity map is totally black
        2. Texture dilation or Padding
      2. Tools Issues
        1. Normal map looks incorrect
        2. Paint Tool bleeds on other UV islands
      3. Project Issues
        1. Corrupted project file
        2. Loading files from a network
        3. Preserve brush strokes setting stays disabled
        4. Projects are really big
      4. Library Issues
        1. Thumbnails in the shelf look incorrect
        2. Error when importing a Font
      5. Viewport Issues
        1. Mesh faces disappear when looking at them from behind
        2. Viewports and textures are blurry or lack sharpness
      6. Plugins Issues
        1. Substance Source plugin doesn't load
      7. License Issues
        1. Maintenance is expired dialog on startup
  11. Pipeline and integration
    1. Installation and preferences
      1. Preferences and application data location
      2. Automated installation
      3. Retrieving the installation path
    2. Configuration
      1. Command lines
      2. Environment variables
      3. Firewall Configuration
      4. Querying Current Software Version
      5. Remote Desktop
    3. Resource management
      1. Shelf and Assets location
      2. Resource paths
        1. Add resource paths manually
        2. Editing resource paths manually
        3. Edit Shelf Preferences with Python
      3. Adding saved searches manually
      4. Preferences and content migration
      5. Excluding resources in a resource path
  12. Scripting and development
    1. Scripts and plugins
      1. Creating a Javascript plugin
      2. Remote control with scripting
    2. Shader API Reference
      1. Shader API overview
      2. Changelog - Shader API
      3. Libraries - Shader API
        1. Lib Alpha - Shader API
        2. Lib Bayer - Shader API
        3. Lib Defines - Shader API
        4. Lib Emissive - Shader API
        5. Lib Env - Shader API
        6. Lib Normal - Shader API
        7. Lib PBR - Shader API
        8. Lib PBR Aniso - Shader API
        9. Lib Pom - Shader API
        10. Lib Random - Shader API
        11. Lib Sampler - Shader API
        12. Lib Sparse - Shader API
        13. Lib SSS - Shader API
        14. Lib Utils - Shader API
        15. Lib Vectors - Shader API
      4. Parameters - Shader API
        1. All Custom Params - Shader API
        2. All Engine Params - Shader API
        3. All Rendering States Params - Shader API
        4. Layering Bind Materials - Shader API
        5. Layering Declare Stacks - Shader API
      5. Shaders - Shader API
        1. PBR Material Layering - Shader API
        2. PBR Metal Rough - Shader API
        3. Pixelated - Shader API
        4. Surface Shader - Shader API
        5. Toon - Shader API
  13. Release notes
    1. Release notes overview
    2. All Changes
    3. Version 11.1
    4. Version 11.0
    5. Version 10.1
    6. Known issues
    7. Old versions
      1. Version 10.0
      2. Version 9.1
      3. Version 9.0
      4. Version 8.3
      5. Version 8.2
      6. Version 8.1
      7. Version 7.4
      8. Version 7.3
      9. Version 7.2
      10. Version 2021.1 (7.1.0)
      11. Version 2020.2 (6.2.0)
      12. Version 2020.1 (6.1.0)
      13. Version 2019.3
      14. Version 2019.2
      15. Version 2019.1
      16. Version 2018.3
      17. Version 2018.2
      18. Version 2018.1
      19. Version 2017.4
      20. Version 2017.3
      21. Version 2017.2
      22. Version 2017.1
      23. Version 2.6
      24. Version 2.5
      25. Version 2.4
      26. Version 2.3
      27. Version 2.2

Automatic UV Unwrapping


The automatic UV unwrapping allow to generate UV islands automatically when importing a 3D model. It can be used to paint on 3D model that don't have any existing UVs.

Enabling the automatic UV unwrapping

When creating a new project or re-importing a mesh into an existing project, make sure the setting "Auto-unwrap" is checked. If disabled, the process will be skipped and mesh UVs will remain as-is.

UV unwrapping settings

When importing a mesh and using the unwrapping process, the following settings are available. Some settings are available via the Options button in the interface.

Section

Setting

Description

Unwrap sequence

Seams

Controls if the seams (UV island borders) should be generated only for meshes that don't have them or always regenerated.

Possible values:

  • Generate missing data (default): Seams will be generated for meshes missing them.
  • Recompute all : Seams will be generated for all the meshes.

UV islands

Controls if the UV unwrapping should generated from meshes without UVs or for any meshes.

Possible values:

  • Generate missing data (default): UV unwrapping will be generated for meshes missing UVs.
  • Recompute all : UV unwrapping will be generated for all the meshes.

Packing

Controls the packing/layout of UV islands of the meshes.

Possible values:

  • Generate missing data (default): pack UV islands for meshes that were missing UVs.
  • Recompute all : pack all UV islands.

Layout customization

Margin size

Defines the spacing between UV islands. This setting applies a general percentage independent from the resolution.

Possible values:

  • No margin : 0%
  • Small (default): 0.2%
  • Medium : 0.5%
  • Large : 1%

UV island orientation

Control the orientation of the UV islands during the packing process.

Possible values:

  • Unconstrained (default): no constrain is applied to compute the orientation.
  • Align with 3D mesh: constrain the UV island to be oriented toward the mesh direction

UV Tiles

Maximum number of UV Tiles

If the UV Tiles workflow is enabled, this settings determine the maximum number of tiles to produce to distribute on the UV islands.

Optimization

Avoid elongated UV islands

If enabled, this process will split UV islands considered too long to improve the usage of the texture space.

Example of before (top) and after (bottom):

Known limitations

Below is a list of limitations related to the unwrapping process:

  • Processing high poly meshes can take a long time.
  • Vertices at the exact same coordinates are merged
  • UV Generation may fail on some mesh parts in some rare cases
  • Non uniform or highly distorted texel ratio in a single UV island in some cases
  • Non uniform texel ratio between Texture Sets
  • UV island generated can be very elongated and do not fit into UV space in some cases
  • Degenerated faces or non-triangular mesh faces with small or overlapping edges may not get UV unwrapped

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