UVLayout is a stand-alone application for the creation and editing of UV coordinates for 3D polymeshes and subdivision surfaces. Used by professionals in the games and visual effects industries, by hobbyists of all ilks and by students, UVLayout's unique approach gives texture artists the tools to produce high quality low distortion UVs in significantly less time than they would by traditional methods.

Using UVLayout could be described as the opposite of dress making; instead of cutting out a flat pattern and sewing that up to make clothing, in UVLayout the object is cut into pieces that are then flattened out to make the pattern. These flattened UV shells are not just planar projections; a dynamics based algorithm is used to spread the UVs out, as you watch, so that there's minimal stretching, compression or skewing of textures when they're applied to the object.

Some major features of UVLayout are:

• OBJ import and export
• Edge-loop Detection for quicker UV seam selection
• Symmetry Editing for faster flattening of symmetrical meshes
• Edge Straightening on shell boundaries and interiors
• Flattening Brushes for local tweaks of the automatically generated UVs
• Auto Packing of UV shells to minimize wasted texture space
• Auto Stacking of similar shells for shared texture space usage
• Subdivision Surface calculations based on limit surface shape
• Unlimited Undo of all editing functions
• Plugin Interface for integration into other applications

Leon model courtesy of CG Toolkit.

Start Mesh		Cutting Up		Ready to Flatten
1] User Defines The UV Seams

Beginning		Middle		End
2] UVLayout Flattens It Out

Color Coded		Checkered		Front		Side		Back
3] Final Result

Leon model courtesy of CG Toolkit.