Help UV unwrapping an object in Blender 2.8 onwards

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I was wondering if anyone could help me out in trying to figure out how UV unwrap an object in the newer versions of Blender. I’ve only started using the newer versions fairly recently, as such I’m not used to all the changes to Blender’s interface but so far the main thing that’s been giving me the biggest problem is UV unwrapping.

For some frustrating reason, I absolutely for the life of me cannot UV unwrap even a simple cube with the new version of Blender. Every time I select Unwrap I get this and then nothing else happens:

uv_unwrapping

2

That is because all the basic primitives have been un-wrapped and have the UVs already…If you want to Unwrap a cube try changing to Box mapping or Smart UV projection…and see the different ways of unwrapping a cube…
Watch this…

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I watched that video before I came here for help along with a bunch of others, it didn’t help :anguished:.

It used to be all that I had to do was mark seams, Ctrl + A, press U button on the keyboard to bring up the UV Mapping options and select Unwrap. But now when I try to repeat the same process in Blender 3.1.0 nothing happens.

At this point, it just seems like to me that I’m better off UV unwrapping models in the older version of Blender because I just can’t get the new version to work at all.

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I have also noticed that newer versions of blender need you to mark seems for UV unwrap to work
with the simple Unwrap option.

The older versions would simply guess where to put seams.

It is always best that you manually mark seams for good results, Blender now forces you to do it.

You have to mark at least one edge as seam for it to do anything, although if you only mark one edge you will probably not get correct results.

The other options like “smart”, “follow active quads”, “light-map”, “cube projection” etc, etc do not require seams to be marked.

In the new versions you should get an error message like this if you try to do it without seams (the message will pop-up and disappear).

Seams
Seams1918×1021 142 KB

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But…, I noticed… that if you…

  1. Click Add | Mesh | Cube (and a cube displays)

  2. “Open” the little UI for size, rotation, etc. (“Add Cube”)

  3. The little UI has a checkbox “Generate UVs”, it is On. It seems to me that it was the factory default setting. And it works fine IMO.

  4. Switch to edit mode. I see no seams marked.

Isn’t life strange?

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I’m not sure what is all this talk about seams, as the object I’m trying to unwrap does have marked seams I manually placed.

block_5
block_51920×1017 165 KB

Its just that when I try to unwrap it in Blender 3.1.0 it doesn’t work, it contrast to the older version of Blender where it does.

block_4
block_41920×1017 160 KB

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Well newer versions of blender do need seams and older versions did not.
Edit: Sorry I missed the second post where you said you marked the seams.
If you have marked seams then it should work fine, but your screenshot is in image editor paint mode not UV mode. Change to UV mode and you should see the UV’s :slightly_smiling_face:

UVMode
UVMode1918×1020 153 KB

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8

Yes I think Blender has the default UV’s for its primitive objects stored somewhere. If you try to unwrap the cube again manually it does not work and complains about the lack of seams.

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Okay, that worked. Thanks for the help!