How to export only the outline of a mesh when exporting uv layout?

Support Materials and Textures
1

Sorry if this is the wrong category… And I don’t really know technical words because I’m a beginner.

I want to know if it’s possible to just have the outline of the mesh exported when exporting the uv layout. So that I don’t have a load of shapes or polygons within the… Outline.

Basically, I want my exported uv layout to look less like a jigsaw puzzle made up of loads of little shapes and more like one solid shape or multiple solid shapes if I have different sides to a mesh, the different islands and such.

What I’m trying to achieve is to try make it easier for me to apply texture to the mesh, because what I do or try to do is export the uv layout as png, open the png with a photo editing program and I try to select the general shape of the uv map with the magic wand tool so I can colour it and texture it without going outside the lines, but when I end up doing that, it only selects parts of the uv layout so it looks like this:

When I want it to select like this (I can only add one picture per topic so follow the link instead…)

http://oi63.tinypic.com/2hd5w9i.jpg

(also before you say “but you have selected like that!” it doesn’t stay like that, this is before letting go of my mouse, after I let go of my mouse, it looks like the first picture.)

So… Help please? Thank you…

2

Exporting just the outline isn’t possible to my knowledge, but there is a workaround.

Once you have your UV map in Photoshop (or whatever) select the blank area (instead of the uvs) then inverse the selection (in Photoshop, this is found in the top part of the Select menu).

Then if you want only one of the uv islands selected, use the m tool while holding down the Alt key to deselect the other islands.

3

Ooh… I feel stupid now. That definitely works. Thanks!

1 Like
4

or use it as a reference layer above your texture in normal, overlay, multiply… mode with lower opacity

PS
i would also propose to rather use 50% gray for UV layout’s background image or other colorless value

5

if you import it into Inkscape
there is a contour tool that might help

happy bl