[Music]
uv unwrapping one of the most divisive
aspects of 3d
some people love it and everyone else
not so much
in this short little intro those were
all assets from the 3db asset library
but the twist here is that most of them
were unwrapped inside substance painter
in this video we'll be taking a look at
substance painter's auto uv's feature
and find out the answer to the age-old
question can we finally skip uv
unwrapping
for our test here we'll be taking three
assets of varying levels of complexity
from 3db and comparing the results of
the auto uvs feature inside painter with
the original uvs of each asset
then we'll texture them inside painter
and figure out whether or not this can
be a feasible way of working for your
projects
before we get started though let's first
export our meshes the easiest way to
export the mesh without uvs is to select
your mesh go to export click on obj
make sure it's selection only and then
uncheck include uvs then click on export
now we can import the meshes into
substance painter by clicking on file
new select our mesh and under import
settings we have a check box here for
auto under app if we click on options
it'll bring up this window where we can
choose how painter will handle the auto
unwrap
we have an option here called recompute
all
and that will basically ignore whatever
pre-existing uvs we have on our mesh
in this case i'll just leave everything
as it is
just give it a few seconds to unwrap and
there's our mesh
for level one let's take a closer look
at how the chopping board was unwrapped
it may be a simple mesh but if we look
at the uvs
it was unwrapped like this because in
real life the wood grains would follow
along the edge like this
let's try dragging in a wooden material
here and as expected
it's going to look really warped because
of the way painter unwrapped the mesh to
get around this we can switch the
projection mode from uv projection to
tri-planar projection and gotta say this
doesn't look that bad
although there are still going to be
some stretching when you look at it up
close
if it's going to be an asset in the
background it's not really all that
noticeable
but for assets like this where a pattern
needs to follow a certain flow like for
wood and considering how easy it is to
just add seams in the corner for a small
asset like this auto uvs aren't going to
cut it for level 2 we have a bedside
table here with two materials
one for the body and one for the drawers
now if we look at the model the wood
grains flow along each panel like this
and if you were to unwrap this manually
you would need to make sure each side is
laid out consistently like this so that
when you do drag in your wood material
the wood grains would look correct
let's just import the mesh into painter
with the default settings give it a
couple of seconds to run your app and
here it is
let's drag in some wood turn off the
height channel and let's change the
projection mode to try planar projection
so far so good
now let's do the same thing for the
drawers
but as you can see it's not always going
to look great you have some really nasty
looking stretching here by the corner
but we can fix this really easily
if we go back to blender
here we have our original asset here
with the uvs already done
if you go down here under object data
properties
under uv maps we can see our active uv
map on our mesh
what we can do here is make sure that
the body is selected and delete the uv
map by clicking on this minus icon
for the drawers let's keep the original
uv syntax
now we can export this mesh again but
this time we can turn on include uvs
if we go back to painter under edit
project configuration
let's select the messages exported and
if you remember our options here it's
currently set to generate uvs only for
missing data
that means when we re-import our mesh it
should keep the uvs for the drawers and
also recompute the uvs for the body
because there isn't any
let's just click on ok and as you can
see the stretching is no longer there
now we can go ahead and start texturing
some parts of the mesh have the wood
grains facing the wrong direction
a cool trick to get around this is to
put our material inside a folder
right click add the black mask
select everything
press x to invert the selection color
and click on the pieces with the wrong
direction
then we can duplicate the folder
right click on the mask and click on
invert mask
now that we have those pieces masked all
we need to do is to rotate our material
to 90 degrees and that should fix the
problem
another issue we have here is the wood
grains might look uniform even though
they're supposed to be separate pieces
an easy fix for that is to just offset
the material a little bit
for the drawers it's basically the same
process
for the handles just mask them out into
their own folder and add in some random
metal material and in almost no time at
all we have a fully textured bedside
table
and finally for level 3 we have a bed
for this mesh let's try playing around
with smart materials
just drag in some random fabric material
and change the relevant layers to try
planar
for the legs i just masked them out and
dragged in a wood smart material
again just change the important layers
to dry planer
and i rotated some of the layers so that
the wood grains are vertical
did the exact same thing for the bedding
but i also added the fill layer on top
with only the roughness channel on and
set that to multiply so that i can
control the roughness
finally dragging the fabric material on
the mattress
set up the tape liner projection and
scaled it up quite a bit then change the
color to white
and just like that we manage the texture
a bit using mostly smart materials and
it looks perfectly fine now going back
to the topic of the video can we finally
skip uv unwrapping the short answer is
no
there are still a lot of really good
reasons to spend some extra time to
unwrap your models properly but when the
deadlines start piling up and you just
need the text for something really
quickly auto uvs is a pretty nifty
feature to have
and
who knows maybe one day the answer to
this video's title will be a resounding
yes
anyway if you learned something useful
from this video or you want to see more
content like this
feel free to like and subscribe
until next time see you around
you