GSoC 2024 Draft：Blender UV Editor Improvements

Contributing to Blender Summer of Code
,
1

GSOC 2024 - Blender UV Editor Improvements

Thanks to everyone who has helped. With your prompting, I’ve rewritten this draft proposal to make it more readable, and the document link below has been updated.
Next I’ll add possible work areas and rough ideas for completion to the proposal, as well as a reasonable schedule!
GSOC 2024 - Blender UV Editor Improvements

Name: Rui Lin

Contact:

Synopsis:

The goal of this project is to implement user-suggested improvements to the UV Editor in order to simplify the UV adjustment process. The main focus of the project would be incorporating more UV Edit Mesh Tools in 2d UV Editor such as straighten UV and symmetry islands, adding additional custom axis of symmetry options to “Copy Mirrored UV Cords”.If time permitted, small features like alignment tools between islands or automatic uv checker generator may be worked on.

Benefits:

Integrating additional mesh editing tools into the UV editor can significantly improve workflow efficiency by allowing for faster and more intuitive manipulation of UV maps. This results in more even distribution of UVs across the model surface, reducing distortion and improving texture utilization to meet the requirements of modern 3D production processes.

Deliverables:

  • Introducing more straightening UV methods
    • Adding Straighten for selection edges and unwrap unselected vertices
    • Adding Quadrify for entire islands/selected rectangular-shaped areas.
  • Introducing new options for Mirror UVs to the UV Editor.
    • Adding Mirror UV mesh for structurally symmetrical islands.
    • Adding custom symmetry axis options to the ‘Copy Mirrored UV Coords’ operator.
  • User documentation
  • Potential tasks
    • Improvements based on community comments and feedback
    • Adding a built-in checker board.
    • Adding alignment options between islands.

Project Details:

  1. Introducing more straightening UV methods:
  • Straighten edge and unfold uv islands
    For complex UVs such as figurehead mapping sometimes you just need to unfold and straighten the edges for easy layout. The current align tool makes some errors, so it needs to be redesigned to have a straightening tool specifically for edges.
  • Quadrify Islands/Region

    • Currently, straightening entire islands in Blender involves aligning one face and then unwrapping using ‘Follow Active Quads,’ which can be complicated and non-intuitive. To simplify this process, I propose implementing two new features.
      The quadrify island feature allows users to select any element in a rectangular-shaped island such as a vertex, edge, face, or an entire island, and then quadrify the island where the selected element is located.

      before quadrify
      before quadrify696×680 155 KB

      after-quadrify
      after-quadrify688×734 31.4 KB

    • The quadrify region option is available for islands where not all faces are squares or where the user only wants to straighten part of the island, the user can select the region to quadrify (ensuring that the region is only quadrilateral) and then automatically quadrify the entire selected region and ensure that the other non-selected faces in the island are well distributed.

      partial_quadrify
      partial_quadrify541×771 86 KB

      quadrify-region
      quadrify-region556×614 45.1 KB

      partial_quadrify2
      partial_quadrify2528×514 73.5 KB

  1. Introducing new options for Mirror UVs to the UV Editor:

  • Adding Mirror UV mesh for structurally symmetrical islands
    The user can select a set of edges as the axis of symmetry and then automatically straighten that edge and mirror it along that axis (postive/negative direction can be selected)

    before quadrify
    before quadrify696×680 155 KB

    correct_mirror
    correct_mirror741×734 63.1 KB

  • Adding custom symmetry axis options to the ‘Copy Mirrored UV Coords’ operator
    Additional options for Copy Mirrored UV Coords could include selecting the axis of symmetry as either the u or v axis, or a specific edge.
    new_opt_mirror

  1. Additional Tasks:
    If the above deliverables are completed earlier than expected, I may take on other tasks such as adjustments based on feedback from the community, or some small tools on the UV layout such as adding alignment options between islands, adding built-in checkerboard grid textures. Which tasks I choose will be based on discussions with my mentor and my experience implementing previous features.
25 Likes