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I've seen in tutorials - people are streightening and pinning their UVs - I really struggle to understand how it works and the reason - why are they doing this.

Doesn't it spoil UVs somehow if I move the points? I really would be grateful for explanation because it seems , that this process improves the quality of final texture.

Bruno Bieri
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Ilya
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1 Answers1

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In understanding the purpose of pinning, I found the following question useful - specifically the first two answers: How do I straighten UV maps?

When unwrapping a complex model, I rarely do it in a single step. My workflow tends to be something like:

  • Mark some seams
  • Unwrap the model
  • Straighten some edges/manually move some UVs around to line them up the way I want
  • Realise I need another seam, so go back to the model to add more seams
  • Unwrap again
  • Continue aligning the UVs ...

Without pinning, when I unwrap my model a second time the UVs I have already manually edited will move. By pinning the parts I know are correct I can unwrap again and only the unpinned UVs will be recalculated.

This is especially useful because the unpinned UVs will be distributed according to the position of the pinned UVs. So by pinning a few key UVs, the next time I unwrap I'll get a result that is much closer to what I'm trying to achieve.

The second answer to the question I linked above gives a good example of this workflow.

John
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