UV Squares Add-On - must have

Blender market has an add-on which cleans selected UVs to a square grid. Now the maker updated it to bigger meshes and it is really beginning to look good!

One use case for example: I had a quad cloth mesh which was folded several times. It didn’t have UVs at all, because it was generated to shape. I quickly unwrapped it with Blender’s default unwrap. Then I ran UV Squares and voila: I could add a cloth texture easily!

It reminds UVLayout’s ‘R’ command, but makes real tight square grid.

For ten bucks this is really good tool!

michalis, I actually knew about “follow active quad”, but how do you make two selections in Blender? I mean I can select a strip for active quads and then select whole mesh, but if I need to select certain area? I have wondered this and thought it’s impossible. Is there a way?

Michalis: the ‘problem’ with Follow Active Quads is that it works completely different from all other Unwrapping methods, in that those use information in the 3d viewport (selection, edge tags etc) to generate the UV. Follow Active Quads needs the user to do something in the 2d viewport as well, but never communicates this! In fact, if a colleague hadn’t told me how it worked, I would’ve just assumed the results I got were all it could do.

Thanks for the link Michalis!

A nice tutorial on follow active quads is what we need here. You may split the mesh using seams. The tool will work on one area (surrounded by seams. So,

  1. select one quad to become active,
  2. [U], Reset, to unwrap it as a perfect quad
  3. [L] to select the “island”
  4. unwrap it.
    In the case of a subdivided quad (the quad cloth mesh),
  • select all,
    -U/reset
    select an active, select all, follow active quad.

There are three options under the properties of the follow active tool. Try them.

It can be used without 2d viewport… it just depends on existing uvs for the active face… usually unwrap using “reset” will face map your quads in 0-1 range then “follow active” makes the unwrap continuous…

Funnily enough most uv editing is done in the 2d viewport anyway (the uv editor!!!) so not sure how this is a “problem”

Well whatever. I don’t always want to modify the whole island.

What it’s worth, I find it much more simple to just select what I want and press one menu item. UV Squares simplifies work.

I guess documentation for those existing features would be nice though.

I don’t always want to modify the whole island.

you don’t have to, just select the active quad (after resetting it to look square in the 2d UV editor) and any other connected quad faces in the 3dviewport. Then, followActive unwrap them.

While we’re at it: michalis, did you find out how blender calculates the “direction” the quads are unwrapped in the UV port?
I can create x loops with the same settings and start unwrapping them and 20% of them the quads in the UV editor are 90° to the rest.
Really annoying.
I can’t find any rhyme or reason behind that.