Edit UVWs Dialog

The menu bar provides access to a wide range of Edit UVWs functions. See Edit UVWs Dialog Menu Bar.

Contains all the controls for manipulating the texture sub-objects in the view window, navigating within the window, and setting other options. When transforming with Rotate and Scale, pressing Ctrl+Alt will allow you to transform the selection from the point of the mouse click, instead of the selection center. The initial click specifies the center of the transform.

Move—Lets you select and move sub-objects. Flyout options are Move, Move Horizontal, and Move Vertical. Press Shift to constrain the movement to a single axis.

Rotate—Lets you select and rotate sub-objects.

Scale—Lets you select and scale sub-objects. Flyout options are Scale, Scale Horizontal, and Scale Vertical.

Pressing Shift as you scale constrains the transform to a single axis.

Freeform Mode—Lets you select and move, rotate, or scale vertices, depending on where you drag. After you make a selection, the Freeform gizmo appears as a rectangular bounding box around the selected vertices. As you move the cursor over the gizmo's various elements and inside the gizmo, the cursor's appearance, and the result of starting to drag in this location, change:

If you Ctrl+select one or more vertices outside the gizmo, the gizmo expands to encompass the entire selection.

Mirror—Mirrors selected vertices and flips UVs. Flyout options are Mirror Vertical, Mirror Horizontal, Flip Horizontal, and Flip Vertical.

Flip first detaches the selection along its boundary edges and then applies a Mirror Horizontal or Vertical depending on the mode.

Expand Selection—Expands the selection. Comparable to the Selection Modes group setting.

Contract Selection—Shrinks the selection by deselecting the outermost sub-objects. Comparable to the Selection Modes group setting.

Falloff Type—Transforming with soft selection affects non-selected vertices within the falloff area based on the falloff type, which you choose from this flyout. This setting affects the comparable setting in the Soft Selection group.

XY/UV—Specifies object or texture space for the falloff distance. XY selects object space, UV selects texture space. This setting affects the comparable setting in the Soft Selection group.

Falloff—This spinner sets the falloff distance. As values increase, unselected vertex colors change gradually from the selected vertex to reflect the area of influence. This setting affects the comparable setting in the Soft Selection group.

Break Selected Vertices—Creates a new vertex for each polygon attached to selected vertices, allowing the polygon corners to be moved away from each other where they were once joined at each original vertex. If a vertex is isolated or used by only one polygon, it is unaffected.

Target Weld—Welds pairs of vertices or edges. Not available at the Face sub-object level.

Turn on Target Weld, and then drag one vertex to another vertex, or one edge to another edge. As you drag, the cursor changes in appearance to cross hairs when it's over a valid sub-object. While this command is active, you can continue welding sub-objects, and change the sub-object level. To exit Target Weld mode, right-click in the editor window.

Weld Selected—Welds selected sub-objects to a single vertex, based on the Weld Threshold setting. You can set the threshold on the Options panel > Unwrap Editor Options group, as well as on the Unwrap Options dialog > Misc. Preferences group.

Show Map—Toggles the display of the map in the editor window.

UV/VW/UW—By default, the UV portion of the UVW coordinates is displayed in the view window. However, you can switch the display to edit the UWs or the VWs.

Unwrap Options—Opens the Unwrap Options dialog.

[texture list drop-down]—Contains all the maps of the material assigned to the object.

The names of the maps assigned in the Material Editor and in the Edit UVWs dialog (via Pick Texture) appear in the list.

Below the map names are several commands:

Choose a map you want to use in the view window. For example, you might use a bump or texture map as a reference to move UVW vertices.

A checker texture named CheckerPattern (Checker), useful for checking for distorted areas of the texture mapping, is built in to the Edit UVWs dialog. By default, this texture appears as the background texture when you first open the editor after applying Unwrap UVW to an object. To cause the pattern to appear on the object in viewports set to display textures, choose it from the drop-down list, even if it's already active in the editor.

The Edit UVWs window allows you to edit UVW sub-objects to adjust the mapping on a model. For example, a texture map might contain the side, top, and front views of a car. By first planar mapping the top, side, and front faces of the model at the Face sub-object level, you can adjust the texture coordinates for each selection to fit the different parts of texture map to the corresponding areas on the car.

To edit the UVW vertices, first choose a transform tool and sub-object mode, make a selection, and then click and drag in the window to transform the selection.

Quad menu—Right-click in the window to display the quad menu, which provides access to all the transform tools, as well as a number of editor commands.

Commands to freeze and hide selected sub-objects and unfreeze/unhide all sub-objects are found only in the quad menu.

Absolute/Offset Mode—When this is off, the software treats values you enter into the U, V, and W fields (see following) as absolutes. When this is on, the software applies transform values you enter as relative to current values; that is, as offsets. Default=off.

U, V, and W—These fields display the UVW coordinates for the current selection. Use the keyboard or the spinners to edit them.

These fields are active at all sub-object levels, but they always apply to vertices. With a single vertex selected, they display the current coordinates. With multiple vertices (or one or more edges or faces) selected, they display any coordinates the vertices belonging to the selection have in common; otherwise, they're blank.

Lock Selection—Locks selection. You can move selected sub-objects without touching them.

Hide Selection—Hides the sub-object selection.

Unhide Selection—Unhides the selection. Available from the Hide flyout.

Freeze Selection—Freezes sub-object selection.

Unfreeze Selection—Thaws sub-object selection. Available from the Freeze flyout.

Filter Selected Faces—Displays UVW vertices of the object's selected faces in the viewport, and hides the rest.

All ID's (drop-down)—Filters the object's material IDs. Displays texture faces that match the ID drop-down.

Pan—Click Pan, and then drag in the window to change the visible portion.

Tip: With a three-button mouse, you can also pan the window by dragging with the middle mouse button held down.

Zoom—Click Zoom, and then click+drag to zoom the window.

Tip: With a wheel mouse, you can also zoom by turning the wheel.

Zoom Region—Click Zoom Region, and then region-select part of the window to zoom in.

Zoom Extents—Zooms in or out to fit the texture coordinates in the window. The flyout buttons, from top to bottom, let you zoom to all texture coordinates, to the current selection, and to all clusters/elements containing any selected sub-objects.

Grid Snap—When on, moving sub-objects tends to snap the vertex closest to the mouse cursor, which is highlighted by a square outline, to the nearest grid line or intersection.

This is the default tool on this flyout; Pixel Snap is also available.

You can set the snap strength in the Unwrap Options dialog.

Pixel Snap—Snaps to the nearest pixel corner when you have a bitmap in the background. Available from the Grid Snap flyout.

Combine this with Center Pixel Snap to snap to the center of pixels rather than the corner.

Note: With multiple vertices selected, all vertices snap to the nearest pixel, relatively; this can slightly alter the spatial relationships among them.

By default, the Options panel, docked to the bottom of the Edit UVWs dialog, provides controls for using soft selection, specifying selection modes, and rotating the selection. The Options button lets you toggle the display of additional settings for bitmaps, viewports, and the editor.

The Soft Selection controls make a sub-object selection behave as if surrounded by a "magnetic field." Unselected sub-objects within the field are drawn along smoothly while you transform the sub-object selection, the effect diminishing with distance. You can adjust this distance, or “falloff,” whether it applies to object space, texture space, or edge space, and the formula by which it diminishes.

First, set a value that encompasses sub-objects to be moved or scaled, and then transform sub-objects with a falloff effect.

On—Activates or deactivates soft selection.

XY/UV—Specifies object or texture space for the falloff distance. XY selects object space, UV selects texture space.

Falloff—Sets the falloff distance. As values increase, unselected vertex colors change gradually from the selected vertex to reflect the area of influence.

Edge Distance—Turn on to limit the falloff region by the specified number of edges between the selection and the affected vertices. The affected region is measured in terms of "edge-distance" space rather than absolute distance.

Falloff Type—Transforming with soft selection affects non-selected vertices within the falloff area based on the falloff type.

The icons depict how their buttons affect falloff. The options are:

[sub-object mode]—Specifies the type of sub-object that you can select by clicking or dragging in the window. Default=Vertex.

One of the three sub-object modes can be active at a time:

Note: Selected sub-objects are colored red by default. Also, in Edge and Face sub-object modes, any shared edges are blue by default. A shared edge is one both of whose endpoints are shared by a selected edge or face; thus, it is, in effect, also selected. You can change these colors using Customize User Interface > Colors panel.

The three sub-object levels are synchronized between the modifier stack of the Unwrap UVW modifier and the Selection Modes group. When you choose a sub-object level in one, it's also activated in the other. Similarly, selecting sub-objects in a viewport selects them in the editor and vice-versa.

Expand Selection—Adds sub-objects to the selection.

Vertex and face expansion proceeds outwards in all available directions. Edge expansion proceeds along available UV paths. For example, to select a cluster outline, select one outer edge, and then click Expand Selection repeatedly.

Contract Selection—Shrinks the selection by deselecting the outermost sub-objects.

Paint Select Mode—Lets you “paint” a sub-object selection by dragging in the editor window. After activating this mode, move the cursor into the editor window, and then drag to select sub-objects. To exit Paint Select mode, right-click or choose a transform tool.

Paint mode selects only sub-objects that are fully inside the selection brush. The dotted circle attached to the mouse shows the size of the brush. Use the +/- buttons next to the paintbrush button to change its size.

+/-—Increases and decreases the size of the Paint Select mode “brush”: the circle attached to the mouse cursor.

Edge Loop—Expands an existing edge selection to select all edges in the loop attached to the selected edges. Select one or more edges, and then click Edge Loop.

Edge Loop uses a “center-path” method to calculate loop selection. To be able to expand a selection, there must be an odd number of edges attached to either end of a selected edge in the editor window. The software then selects the middle connected edge, and then continues selecting as long as it can using each newly selected edge. When it encounters an edge connected to an even number of edges, or to which the middle edge is already selected, it stops.

Select Element—Selecting a sub-object in a cluster causes the entire cluster to become selected. Works in all sub-object modes.

Sync to Viewport—Causes any sub-object selection in the viewports to be reflected in the editor window.

Note: To see face sub-object selections in a shaded viewport, turn on Shade Selected Faces (F2) and/or Edged Faces (F4).

Rot(ate) +90—Rotates the selection 90 degrees about its center.

Rot(ate) -90—Rotates the selection -90 degrees about its center.

Click the Options Button to make this group available.

Use Custom Bitmap Size—When turned on, scales the bitmap texture to the values specified by Width and Height. You can adjust these settings to scale and reproportion the bitmap texture in relation to the texture coordinates. This scaling doesn't affect the bitmap in the material, but only as viewed in the editor.

Tip: When working with large textures, reduce the bitmap size for faster feedback. And when working with disproportionate textures, setting the dimensions closer to each other in the editor can make it easier to work.

Width—Scales the bitmap along the horizontal axis.

Height—Scales the bitmap along the vertical axis.

Tile Bitmap—When turned on, you can repeat the bitmap in the editor, displaying tiling set in the material. You can use any part of the tiled image for setting texture coordinates. This is helpful when the sections of the texture image are packed tightly together and the mesh contains many different areas to map.

Tiles—The number of times the texture image is repeated, counting outward in eight directions (the four corners and the four sides).

With Tiles=1, the result is a 3 x 3 grid. With Tiles=2, the result is a 5 x 5 grid, and so on.

Brightness—Sets the brightness of the tiled bitmap. At 1.0, the brightness equals that of the original image; at 0.5 it's half the brightness; and at 0, it's black.

Tip: Turning off Affect Center Tile, available in the Unwrap Options dialog > Display Preferences group, prevents the Brightness setting from affecting the center tile, so it's easier to find if you've turned down the brightness.

Constant Update—When on, the viewports update in real-time, reflecting any changes to the texture coordinates as you make them. When off, the viewports update only after you finish transforming texture coordinates (that is, when you release the mouse button).

Highlight Selected Verts—Turns on viewport display of vertices, which then highlight to indicate selected sub-objects in the window.

Show Hidden Edges—Toggles the display of face edges. When turned off, only faces appear. When turned on, all mesh geometry appears.

Center Pixel Snap—When Pixel Snap is turned on, snaps to the center of pixels of the background images instead of pixel edges.

Weld Threshold—Sets the radius within which welding using Weld Selected takes effect. The setting is in UV-space distance. Default=0.01. Range=0 to 10.