Every time I tried to generate a UV map, be it a basic Unwrap or smart Unwrap, it always comes out as a jumbled mess of barely coherent lines.
Do you guys know of or use any external UV editor programs?
I don’t know of any other programs personally. I find Blender’s UV Unwrapping to be top notch myself. If it’s just generating nonsense, it’s not doing something correctly.
3DBuzz had a pretty good overview of how it works.
CGCookie has a few tutorials on it too.
Good video here on live unwrapping as well.
I think Blender has the best uvtools ever…
When the uvtools from psifi will be integrated in 2.62, the uv editing will be the best one for sure…
To get a good unwrap you need to add seams
I agree, I think Blenders UV tools work very well. We used Blender to unwrap a lot of assets at EA Sports when I was working there as a Character Artist, simply because is UV tools worked so much better than XSI or Maya’s. This was back in 2007-2008 when I worked there and Blender had the LSCM unwrapping system, and if I’m not mistaken it has improved a lot in ease since then.
Once you know how to use the unwrap tool properly, you will find that it is quite powerful and works very well. I’m sure you’ve seen countless examples of good unwraps made with Blender here on the art forums.
3ds max has them. Spline unwrapping for example. And many other minor things I miss in blender (for example selecting a bunch of vertices and unwrapping them in a grid shape).
I suppose that is why there is a branch about uvunwrapping enhancing.
This reply was actually helpful! Good job. To extend it:
Blender’s uv unwrapper is not the same thing as say Maya’s “automatic mapping”, in blender you need to add seams where the on the mesh the uv should be cut. That is done by selecting an edge (alt+select to get edgeloops) and press ctrl+E (for edge tools) and click mark seam.
Blender UV editor is fine.
I mostly agree with Bao2 though. 3dmax has something better. It’s hard in blender trying to align vertices. But I manage it.
Do you know how difficult is to unwrap this shirt and align it on this texture? I didn’t manage to paint it in zbrush (impossible) or 3dcoat (impossible again). Blender 2.49b did it.
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Auto UV apps? You won’t find any good around except the UVmaster in zbrush. This last is great but you also have to learn it and understand the tricks.
Blender lacks the sort of interactive widgets for projections offered by some other apps which mean that some will prefer those other tools. Placing seams sorts this most of the time and personally I find gives more control than any other method.
UV tools in blender are top notch as long as you understand UV space.
you should try “follow active quads”. I’ve used it in many cases where “spline unwrapping” or “unwrapping in a grid shape” are the desired result… eg mapping bendy roads for racing games…
Sorry for the double post, website went down as I was posting earlier…
Blender is very bad. 
Other 3d softwares are very good. 
What are the best ways to get those test-grid patterns to be uniformly projected on a mesh object.
I believe, a fair topology and evenly distributed quads solves this problem. However, at times it seems to be a daunting task, you would see some test-grids a bit stretching out and some gets squeezed. (I should mention; I have tried with Average Islands Scale and Minimize Stretch but much help)
I would say…wait until the uv part of the onion branch is merged into trunk for the 2.62 release.
some nice improvements and better tools:
auhauhauha… NO.
There is also avocado automatic seams generation waiting to be merged.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Shuvro/soc2011
It’s hard in blender trying to align vertices.
What do you miss in the Weld/align menu of UVeditor ?
Angle based method is the default and often people don’t try to change it to conformal method.
Personally I find Blender’s UVW tools to be the best out there, if you know where to add seams and have some knowledge of how to properly pack UV’s (which is general knowledge AKA not software-specific) you can get a great unwrap 99% of the time.
If you are looking for the best one-click auto-unwrap solution then you have to get Zbrush and projection master but for simple things the Smart Unwrap in Blender works just as well, it is worth noting that for complex meshes auto-unwrapping is not desirable, no matter what software you use.
Also the most important thing that almost everyone seems to not know, IT DOESN’T TAKE A MINUTE TO UNWRAP A COMPLEX MODEL! The industry professionals doesn’t use one-click solutions and it doesn’t take them 20 seconds to unwrap a model, it can take several hours (if not days) to unwrap one character.
If you want to unwrap your models, learn to unwrap them correctly, do not use one-click solutions and SPEND SOME TIME WORKING ON IT, don’t expect it to be done in one minute.
For the most part, I think Blender’s UV unwrapping/mapping tools are pretty good. However, there’s room for improvement, that’s for sure.
I found using project from view is the most efficient. For stills.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Textures/Mapping/UV
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Textures/Mapping/UV/Unwrapping
There is room for improvement, of course there is!
But UV editor was OK in 2.49 and still is. Almost LOL.
What do you miss in the Weld/align menu of UVeditor ?
I’m not complaining… there could be some more clever tools I guess.
The more important is that blender UV editor can do anything we like.
It’s funny to read opinions against this, mostly coming from users that probably know nothing about UVs.
The test is simple. Try to unwrap a shirt or a couch mesh and apply a tartan like cloth. Good luck. Blender can do this with precision. You have to think as a tailor , do the seams as a tailor does. Any stretching is not acceptable.
I found using project from view is the most efficient. For stills.
?
This is more useful for transferring multiple UV projections on the final good UV. Via tex painting. Old method still valid.
For stills I recommend nodes editor. Useful for fast presentations or images as base for illustrations.