Blender and UV's

Excuse me if this has already been answered, I would search it up but I honestly don't even know what to look up lol.

So I'm kinda newish to blender and 3D texturing, and I was hoping for some advice.

The way I am texturing is the following:
- Mark seam
- Unwrap
- Open UV tab and create new image
- Switch from view -> paint

This is seeming to work, however I am running into some problems (Would like to resolve before LD!)

My first issue is with how I'm texturing. When I go into Paint in the UV window, it shows the entire layout. Is there anyway to make it so only the faces selected in edit mode is shown?


Is there a better/more efficient way of texturing from within blender? Ive tried importing and exporting UV layouts to PS but for the life of me sometimes I cant figure out blenders UI and Importing the textures back into unity never works out so well.



Any help would be nice! Thanks

 

UV unwrapping usually involves quite a bit more work. Simply unwrapping will generally make overlapping UV islands and bad stretching. Yes, careful placement of seams helps this, but unwrapping individual portions with a combination of projections and other unwrapping functions then putting it back together in the UV editor, you can generally get a good UV map in Blender. Of course if you just want a quick UV map with a minimum of stretching you can use Smart UV Project, but this makes a lot of little fragmented islands.

As for hiding things in paint mode, I don't think you can do that. In paint mode it shows you the entire UV layout. However in paint mode you're generally painting on the 3d model, not painting in the UV window. It shouldn't really matter, and shouldn't stop you from using the tool. And if you're painting in the UV window you might want to think about exporting the UV map as an image and using a more competent painting tool, Blender has some basic painting functions but it's not great. You can import and export images just fine from Blender, I don't know what problems you're talking about there.

 

when I export a complex UV map to photoshop, its hard telling which piece is what. Is there a way to just export individual pieces and do it that way? Thats what my problem is as of now haha. I feel like theres a certain technique to it. Id love to use photoshop, but again, with complex layouts its hard telling whats what.

Using multiple UV maps is a little confusing to me

 

The better you make the UVs, the easier it will be to recognize which islands correspond to what part of the model. You can also paint directly on the model in paint mode, which can work well if you have a good enough UV map.

If you are interested in doing it in Photoshop, one way you could learn which part is which on your UVs, have open both the 3d view and the 2d image view. Be in edit mode, and if you select all verts, you should see all of them show up on the 2d side. You can then deselect everything. If you select a vertex(one that isn't part of a seam), you can then press the L key, and it will select "linked" verts, which if you have done seams correctly, making separate islands, will select the rest of that island. This will then show just that island on the UVmap, at which point you could paint over it for a label or whatever you want. Then you can press H in edit mode to hide those verts, and repeat the process.

The above steps are more of a temporary measure for until you figure out better how to make good seams and UVs. Once you do, you won't have issues recognizing. Another way you can do it is if you make a UVtest image, it will apply it to your model. Then you can move around a UV island and see which part of your model changes to know what it is. A UV test image also serves to better your UV map, letting you see what kind of texel distribution you have per face(if it is even), letting you see if your needed detail areas indeed have more space(like human faces need more texture space usually). And you can see how smooth the image is on your model so you can fix the UVs if you get lots of stretching.

Another thing to consider if you are interested in getting better at this, maybe invest in a better painting tool. My favorite is the Substance Suite, including Painter. You still have to make UVs, but with this software it is a little more forgiving if things aren't up to AAA quality on your UVs. Of course you can't just have everything terrible either. And, it lets you paint directly on the model similar(but better than) to Blender's paint mode. But you get layers like Photoshop, and can paint all the different textures a material needs, say a normal map, roughness(if doing PBR), etc... Of course, good software costs money. I personally subscribe to the LIVE subscription they have, letting me use all of the software in latest versions.

 

Photoshop can open OBJ files that you can paint on in 3D. Also remember that you have the option to not have any UV's and instead use vertex painting. The detail level will be bound to how many vertices there is in the model but it is still a valid option in some cases.