Hi I’m trying to learn Blender, but I got stuck at UV unwrapping. I’ve tried watching some youtube videos on the topic, but none of the helped me resolve it.
I’ve downloaded a 3D model from somewhere, can’t remember.
Then I’ve changed some parts added some parts and I now I wanted to do the UV unwrapping thing. But nothing works. I’ve selected the entire thing in edit mode and tried smart UV project. I’ve tried dividing the whole thing into smaller part with “P” separate and adding seams then unwrapping but still nothing worked. I’ve added a new 3D mesh cube and I can’t unwrap even that.
I select the whole cube in edit mode(click on a part of it then press “L”) then press “U” then smart UV project and nothing.
When I try it in a new clean file it all works. it’s like UV stuff is locked in that file. I’ve tried out vertice painting before. Would that affect the unwrapping part?
Please define “nothing worked”. The UVs do not appear in the UV editor?
Yes the UV didn’t appear there
Just a sanity check, you sure that you have the UV editor open, and not just the Image Editor? If so, the behavior you describe is definitely not normal, and to assist further we’d probably need an example file.
I can’t upload the file here since I’m a new user.
But I’ve uploaded it here: https://easyupload.io/dgtflc
psw: abc
and yes I’ve had the UV editting window open, as I’ve said I’ve tried it on a new clean file with some shapes and the unwrapping worked.
I can’t access that upload, because apparently I’m an attacker. Could you please use a less, uh, opinionated hosting, e.g. pasteall.org/blend/ ? You don’t have to send the whole file either, just a small sample should be sufficient.
Not sure how to send a small sample. Do you mean like separate a part of it delete the rest and save it as a new file?
Here’s the whole thing: https://pasteall.org/blend/1e00f2f199e2484a82fabe76a4cb5868
Yup, that’s what I meant (separating, in case you don’t want to publicly share all your work).
Anyway, seems to work fine here. Although when I switch to the UV Editing workspace, the editor on the left is an Image Editor, not a UV editor, so I had to switch it.
That said, going by the UI in that file, it appears it’s coming from a pre-2.8 version of Blender. Which version are you using so I could double-check on that?
Thank you very much I’ve switched the image editor to the UV editor and it worked for me as well.
I thought it was the UV editor since I’ve clicked on the UV editing pane on the top. Had no idea this could happen.
As far as I can tell the problem is that the file comes from 2.7x or earlier. Those had layouts, a concept that became workspaces in current Blender versions. Their configuration is saved with the file. But, in those versions the UV/Image editor was one editor, which got split into two distinct editors in 2.8+. I’ve just verified that if you save a file in 2.79 and load in e.g. 2.92 then the UV Editing workspace will indeed have the Image Editor open by default, not the UV Editor. Just a versioning quirk to be aware of, I guess.
Is there a quick way to upgrade the version of the file? and maybe reset the layout?
or just copy over the mesh to a new file 
When using the Open dialog you can click the cog button at the top right and untick “Load UI” in settings that’d show up. Then the UI will be sourced from your startup file instead. After that you can just save.