UV Master simplifies generating UV maps to create clean, optimized UVs with minimal effort. This plugin automates seam placement, unwrapping, and UV packing, making it accessible to beginners and professionals.
Unlike traditional UV mapping tools that require manual seam placement, UV Master utilizes algorithms to generate UVs with minimal distortion while keeping them readable for texture painting in external applications. You can refine the results with Polygroups, Control Painting, and Density adjustments to influence how the unwrapping process distributes UV space.
UV Master consists of three primary sections:
1. Unwrap – Automatic creation of UVs with options to improve seam placement and maintain symmetry.
2. Painting – Influence the seam generation and UV layout through control painting techniques.
3. Utilities – Additional workflow efficiency tools include Work On Clone, Copy UVs, Paste UVs, and Check Seams.
By combining these features, UV Master offers a streamlined, efficient way to create UV maps, eliminating manual UV editing while allowing fine-tuned control over the process.
ZBrush for iPad works the same as ZBrush desktop. Learn more in the ZBrush desktop UV Master section.
The Unwrap features generate UVs for a model. These options determine seam placement, UV islands, and packing efficiency. The default settings provide fully automatic UV generation, while additional options help refine the process based on model structure and user preferences.
Generates UVs automatically by placing seams, unwrapping, and packing UV islands for an optimized layout.
Uses ZBrush's algorithms to create UVs that are easily readable for texture painting.
Unwraps all visible subtools at once using the active Unwrap settings, which is helpful for quickly generating UVs across multiple objects without individual processing.
Create symmetrical UVs when possible, ensuring a mirrored unwrap across the model's X-axis.
In some cases, the topology prevents UV Master from preserving or applying symmetry. When this happens, UV Master splits UV islands to maintain balance.
Create UV islands based on existing Polygroups. Using Polygroups helps organize UVs logically and reduces stretching by keeping separate geometry parts in their islands.
Recommended for complex models with distinct surface areas.
This setting interprets pre-existing UV seams from an imported model and recalculates the UVs using UV Master's optimization while keeping the original seam placement intact.
The Use Existing Seams option works well for refining UV maps from external applications.
The Painting section controls seam placement and UV layout by allowing users to "paint" where UV Master should avoid seams or prefer seam placement. Painting seams offers improved creative control over UV island formation, ensuring a clean, readable layout for texture painting.
Activates control painting, offering three painting modes to paint UV seam placement with a brush.
When Enable Control Painting is active, the Paint brush is automatically selected.
Prevent seams from being placed in painted areas. Protect helps keep key regions (e.g., faces, large surface areas) free of visible seams.
Encourages seams to be placed in painted areas while helping to direct UV seams to less visible regions like creases or hidden surfaces.
Removes Protect and Attract painting using a brush, resetting the control painting map.
Automatically generates an Attract map based on the model's ambient occlusion. This setting also places seams in less visible areas, like crevices and folds, for better UV placement.
Adjusts the UV space allocation for specific areas by modifying the UV shell size. Density also ensures that important areas (like a character's face) receive more UV space than less detailed regions (like a character's back).
Enable Control Painting must be active to use Density.
Allows multiplication or division of UV space for specific areas. Used to increase or decrease texture resolution in different parts of the model.
Control the intensity of the density painting from 1x to 4x the UV size. A higher value increases texture space, while a lower value reduces it.
Allows UV density adjustments by multiplying or dividing texture space.
Multiply Mode (X) increases resolution in the painted area.
Divide Mode (/) reduces resolution in the painted area to conserve UV space.
The Utilities section provides essential workflow tools that simplify UV processing, ensure non-destructive editing, and allow fine-tuning of the UV layout. These tools help you protect and transfer your UV edits and refine the final results.
Create a temporary duplicate of the model to edit UVs without affecting the original. Work On Clone removes subdivision levels to optimize the unwrapping process.
ZBrush does not store some UV editing actions in Undo History. Use Work On Clone before making manual UV edits to prevent unrecoverable edits and preserve your work.
Copy the generated UVs from a cloned model into memory and transfer the UVs back to the original model.
Apply the copied UVs to the original model or another subtool with matching topology. The Paste UVs option ensures that UVs remain consistent across different versions of the same model.
Temporarily flatten the model into 2D UV space, allowing for manual UV adjustments. Flatten is useful for visually checking UV layouts before finalizing and editing UV island positions.
When flattened, use Masking, Polygroups, and Gizmo3D to reposition or scale UV islands.
Restore the flattened UV layout to its original 3D form.
Unflatten must be used before switching to another tool or subtool.
Automatically assigns temporary polypaint to the seams to visualize the UV seams on the model.
Erase all control painting data (Protect, Attract, Density) stored for the model. Clear Maps resets UV Master settings to default for a fresh unwrap.
Load a previously saved Control Painting Map to reapply seam and density settings. This setting helps maintain consistent UV settings across multiple sessions.
Save the current Control Painting Map for later use.
Use SaveCtrlMap to preserve custom seam preferences when reworking UVs in the future.