About straightening UVs or not.

Hayden Zammit

This is a question that has been bothering me for a while regarding straightening UVs.

The model on the right is how Roadkill unwrapped it. The uvs for that are the curved UVs in the Uv editor.

The one on the left is after I went in and straightened the UVs.

Is it better to always go in and straighten Uvs like this?

I know this probably sounds like a rudimentary question, but its been bugging me.

JamesWild

The one on the left probably has a teeny tiny amount more distortion, but it's not enough that you'd likely notice it and it'll be a lot easier to paint. Depends on your workflow. If you plan on painting hatches or panels or planks onto it, straighten it out. If your geometry's going to be baked with minimal post-editing it'll probably good either way.

BARDLER

It really depends on what you will be texturing with. For example if you were doing a handpainted textures in photoshop the straightened one would be a lot easier to work with. If you were doing 3D painting then it wouldn't really matter at all.

killnpc

i agree with what's been said already.

this is my take.

the left solution can accommodate for:
1. UV packing (better use of texture space)
- the more allotted resources you have, the less need you'll have for efficient UVs.

2. sharper cleaner lines (less aliasing)

- the larger the texture becomes and the heavier your in-game texel-density becomes, the less it matters.

3. faster process (depending on the desired material and effect)
- when i say "GO", apply a tire tread pattern to your texture.

-kp

JacqueChoi

I'm starting to switch over to using more Straight mapping in production pipelines.

A couple of the reasons being:

- Easier to paint out seams.
- Allows for LOD's without artifacts showing up.


For personal Projects I tend to use the 'roadkill'd' version.

EarthQuake

I will often straighten only on one axis, if the shape is really tapered, clamping the edges on both axises can cause a lot of distortion. but I rarely leave the 'roadkill' type unwraps with large archs, because they take up a lot more uv space and make it harder to pack. If you clamp edges on at least 1 axis you can pack stuff tighter and save a lot of room.



For the above I think its fine to clamp in either 1 or 2 axises, whatever you prefer.



However for stuff like this ^, I think one axis is best.