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I wanted to formulate a question, but I didn't really know what I'm actually dealing with.

Blender displays the file in such a way that I don't really know what I should call it.

My UVs look like this:

enter image description here

I have uploaded the Blend file here.

As it is perhaps already plain to see, the different subobjects have an equal distance (I think 0 pixels) when viewed in the UV pane.

When I load the obj in any software, the textures are displayed correctly.

Does my model use UDIMs?

Any information is really appreciated.

tmighty
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1 Answers1

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They are normal UV's, although a UDIM style layout has been used. UDIM support in blender is being worked on and should be included in the 2.80 release.

UDIM support will allow a single material to use multiple image textures, all sharing a single UV layout.

The model you have uses multiple materials, each assigned to a different part of the mesh. Each material uses the same UV layout with a different image texture. In the end the result is the same.

This is possible from the way UVs work, the position of a vertex in the UV layout is an X,Y position on the image as a percentage, that is a range from zero to one, so 0.0 is one side of the image, 0.5 is the middle and 1.0 is the other side. This helps by allowing us to use different resolution textures with the same UV layout. Unless set to clip, an image texture will repeat continuously, so a UV position of 1.5 resolves to the same image location as 0.5. In this case it is only used for clarity, you will get the same result by placing each section directly on top of each other.

The main difference with UDIM is that it repeats on larger numbers, were UVs go from zero to one, a UDIM layout can be zero to ten, with each whole number corresponding to a different image, so 1.5 will be the middle of the second image, 3.5 the middle of the fourth and 10.5 should wrap back to the same place as 0.5 on the first image.

For reference ptex is another approach to this from Disney, it allows a different texture resolution to be used for each polygon, technically it is considered a different texture for each face and doesn't use UVs, all thee textures are then combined into one texture file. There has been some work done to add ptex to blender but it has never been completed.

sambler
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  • Could I un-UDIM it? I'm asking because this layout gives me quite some headaches. If I could simplify it, I'd be really glad. – tmighty Jun 26 '18 at 21:22
  • Since all my textures have the same size, UDIMs aren't really good for anything in this case, right? Except making it more difficult for me... – tmighty Jun 26 '18 at 21:51
  • As sambler wrote, this isn't actually UDIM. It's just UVs organized in a way that allows someone to see all of the UVs, even when materials using different textures are joined together in a single object. If you want, you can box select each bit and 'g' 'x' '-512' (if you have no image loaded) to move it a single texture space to the left, to get these all into the same texture space, but I think you'll find that's not much better-- you'll just end up with tons of overlapping UVs until you separate the object into component materials. – Nathan Jun 26 '18 at 21:59
  • @Nathan Could you show me how to separate the object into component materials? I have no idea what you mean. – tmighty Jun 26 '18 at 22:18
  • I think that's a different question, tmighty. Try to Google it first, then ask. – Nathan Jun 26 '18 at 22:42
  • @tmighty, when you duplicate a uvmap layer in blender the current layer gets copied. So create six copies, then in each layer delete the layout you don't want and move the one you do into the normal position. – sambler Jun 27 '18 at 06:25
  • @sambler Thank you. I'm still trying to understand it. Let's take the "lFoot" and "lShin". They use the same material, and they have their UVs in the same "rectangle". If it was NOT UDIM, both would have their own UV "rectangle". Because this would take up more space, UDIM is used so that we can save some UV space, right? – tmighty Jun 27 '18 at 12:25
  • ps: @Nathan I can import the obj and have the option "Split" activated. This would create objects for all body parts, but that wouldn't change the UV, I think, so I'm confused what you're suggesting. – tmighty Jun 27 '18 at 12:28
  • The only reason I suggested separating it into parts is because once you move all the UV's into bounds (0-1, 0-1 space), you'll have a huge mess of overlapping UVs that will be hard to work with. I described how to actually move those UVs in my comment above. – Nathan Jun 27 '18 at 15:40