That’s why I decided to write this tutorial to help you understand a few concepts that might help you save some time in the future and also make a good impression on your peers. This workflow mostly applies to VFX work, but some of these concepts might be implemented to games too.

That being said, the techniques I’m going to share with you were things that I’ve learned from friends, mentors, and colleagues, and you have the right to disagree with them because they are mainly personal taste. I want to give a shout to my dear friend Christian Peck, who was the guy who was patient enough to teach me almost everything about UV’s and Justin Holt who helped me upgrade these skills to another level.

Let’s get started:

WHY GOOD UV’S ARE CRUCIAL?

The task of unwrapping and laying out UV’s varies from company to company. Some studios have the modelers doing it and others, the texture painters.

If you’re a modeler, it is essential for you to understand how painful it is for a texture artist to receive bad UV’s. When a painter is dealing with an asset with multiple materials and tiles, we have to paint masks and painting those masks we have to make unique selections in MARI. If the UV’s aren’t organized, that task might take a long time to complete, and we’ll end up wasting the company money.

On the GIF below you can see a good example of good and organized UV’s. Space is well used, and everything is easy to understand and select.