GSOC 2023: UV Editor Improvements Feedback

Hi! This topic is for any feedback/ suggestions regarding the GSOC 2023 project UV Editor Improvements.

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Hello! Thank you so much for working on this, I canā€™t wait to see how this develops.

Since the focus is incorporating mesh edit tools into the UV editor, adding the snapping options that can also apply to UV edit mode would be really great.

So things like snap edges/faces, Align Rotation to Target Option, Snap Active to Selected Option, etc, and maybe other options that would make sense to add.

Also maybe related to snapping, the UV editor kind of has a concept of active, but doesnā€™t really do anything with it, and seeing as how powerful it is in mesh editing, it could also be good to properly support active element in the UV editor.

Of course this is all if timing permits for you to add some of these, either way canā€™t wait to try the new improvements.

something that I really miss is a visual feedback to spot in realtime when uv islands are overlapping and when they are flipped.

There are some addons to workaround that, but in complex situations they are very slow and also not realtime.

thank you.

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Could uv sync selection be on by default or is that a bad idea. Just my suggestion

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It would be nice to add more control to the Align Rotation operator
For example, I want the operator to additionally flip the island. Itā€™s faster than manually rotating the island afterwards.
Source Geometry:

Result in main:

My Idea:

It would also be nice to clean up the context menu. Such operators as Copy/Paste UV, Align Rotation would look great there

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Not sure if this falls within the scope of the project, but if you could improve snaps in the UV editor that would be neat. Maybe this could give you some ideas:

Other really nice improvements would be for to do what the Zen-UV addon does. You might want to look up the feature videos of the addon to get inspired. Things to consider are:

  1. Aligning UVs to world coordinates
  2. Scale islands to a target texel density
  3. Adding UV checker maps with a few clicks within the UV editor (so you wonā€™t have to go to the shader editor and create a checker map first)
  4. Mark seams by angle, basically a wrapper that does select sharp edges > mark as seam

    You can see how useful this could be to get quick seams so you reduce manual seam marking.
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Blender needs texel density tools. Being able to sample texel density from UV islands, set the size of your UV map in relation to texel density, and finally applying texel density to selected objects is a must for keeping consistent texture quality. Used all the time for games where optimizing assets for performance are very important.

Right now this is only possible with add-ons. More alignment tools and stacking tools would be welcomed as well. Also, agreed with the above post about adding a checkerboard preview texture to find deformations in your textures, since that helps visualise texel density as well.

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I digress to say loudly. Blenderā€™s UV editor still NEEDS a proper dedicated UI Toolbar.

Something dedicated to the top of the UV editor (horizontally with small icons) or a vertical side (blender usual) UI with a combination of small icons, buttons, etc.

I would like to know how feasible is it to port into Blender (Tex Tools, or UV toolkit) tool-sets as a set of ā€œstandard uv toolsā€ for Blenders software. I know these add-ons require maintenance, but these are fundamental essential UV operations that are still missing in 2023ā€™s Blender. Thereā€™s no logical argument as to why Blender should still abstain itself from these proper additions to its base set of tools.

Also, I would really love to see Blenders community do away with its obsession to advocate ā€œGet it in the Add-onā€ approach to everything that aims at polishing Blender for the better.

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I would like to have a relax operator in blender as in 3ds max. Also be able to set the number of repetitions of pictures in the editor. It is in all programs. This is called a tiling map.
I also wanted to be able to group selected islands and give them names and quick access to select these groups by name.


Sometimes you also want to quickly get a set form from such a form. Manually select and press Align X Y for a long time.

straighten This is supposed to give that result, but this command simply collapses the grid into a straight line and thatā€™s it.

Hello.
Unwrapped UV should be visible in UV editor, even when object is selected in object view or in edit mode.
The faces/edges/vertices should be highlighted in UV editor, when selected on the model in edit mode.

This should simplify the approach on UV wrapping and make it easier in positioning meshes if you are using UDIM approach.

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I donā€™t know if this is in the scope of this project, but just created this on Right-Click select and remembered about this thread.

In Texture Paint mode we can see UV Map in the UV Editor. You canā€™t select it, but you can see it. It would be helpful if we could see same overlay in every mode, not just in Texture Paint. When switching between modes itā€™s awful that youā€™re constantly losing UV Map visual

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Blender Bob streamed some great feedback. Side by Side demonstration live about UVā€™s.

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Agree, it would be a better system if object mode would show the uvs and if sync was improved or removed in favor of this.

However, I do want to say that the current system allows for a very fast way to UV without the need for seams, and I would like this functionality to be kept.

I believe that is why the current uv system doesnā€™t have everything shown all at once, but I donā€™t see why the unwrap tool couldnā€™t just only unwrap selection as a default behavior and a highlight system canā€™t be used with it (rather than the current system of hiding non-selected faces/edges).

In addition to seeing the UVs of any selected object while in object mode, the currently selected UVs should be highlighted some way in the 3D viewport even if UV sync is off.

Someone mentioned where that UV Sync is good for hiding UVs not being worked on, but thatā€™s silly because Local View already exists. UV sync also prevents a lot of tools from working, tools that are a necessity for advanced and precise unwrapping used in workflows like games and real time engines.

But as above, the whole concept of UV Sync needs to go. If thereā€™s a technical reason why it might need to stay, then requests like these will at least make it usable

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UV sync is supposed to be used in baking UV workflows of a complex objects with lots of tiny chunks, so you can locate them in 3d viewport by selecting in UV editor by pressing ā€˜num Delā€™ (zoom to selected) operator, or vice versa - selecting in 3d view and locating in UV.
There already was requests and tasks to make it usable, for example to split shared vertices selection and polygons detatching behaviour ftom this mode.

Thatā€™s the legacy from which it stems but I am also not sure if it is really needed any more.
The problem with the ā€œsync UVsā€ workflow is that is changes behaviour in the viewport rather drastically.

In theory I could imagine a rather simple ā€œonly show activeā€ button that is able to highlight only the active polygons or optionally even grey out the inactive ones. But this would change usage behaviour much deeper than is the scope of a GSOC project. This would also need a lot more discussions, probably.

I agree that it might be better to adjust the existing ā€œSync UVsā€ to be a bit more user friendly if possible.

If we do have capacities for larger features we would need more modern unwrap/relax alogrithms much more urgently, before that.

All of that is probably out of scope of this forum and this GSOC project, though.

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This is a topic for feedback on features being worked on for the summer of code project.

If you have concrete feedback regarding the features being worked on, or concrete suggestions for things that could be done during that (short) project it is welcome here.

Everything else is off topic.

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Just wondering - if GGEF (Even/Flipped) vertex slide mode is planned to be supported in UV as well?

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