DreamUV is a collection of tools that allow you to manipulate UVs in Blender's 3D viewport. The toolset is designed for reusable textures such as tile textures, decorative sheets, and texture atlases. The purpose is to allow you to texture geometry without exiting the 3D view, saving time and increasing flexibility.
1. Install DreamUV
First download as zip and use "Install from file..." in Blender User Preferences/Add-ons
DreamUV should now be visible in the UV category of the Extras tab. Once activated, DreamUV can be found in the toolbar in edit mode.
2. Use DreamUV
Once installed, the DreamUV toolset can be found in the toolbar of the 3D viewport window. It will appear in edit mode.
3. Viewport UV tool
Viewport UV tools are a collection of tools for directly manipulating UV maps in the 3D viewport. These tools are particularly useful when working with tile- or decking-based materials.
The Move, Scale, and Rotate tools allow you to transform UVs in real time, just like transforming a mesh. There are several keyboard and mouse combinations you can use when using this tool. They work similarly to the default Blender transform tools:
- X: Constrain translation/zoom to x-axis
- Y: Constrain translation/zoom to y-axis
- Middle mouse button: Hold down and drag along the x or y axis to constrain the tool to that axis. Release to lock the constraint.
- SHIFT: precise mode
- CTRL: step mode
- CTRL+SHIFT: step mode, smaller intervals
The Move, Scale, and Rotate tools also have buttons to transform UVs in discrete steps, which can be set using snap size.
The Extend tool expands selected faces and attaches them to the active face.
The Stitch tool will stitch the UVs of two selected faces on their shared edge
The Loop tool will rotate the selected face's UVs 90 degrees and constrain them within their boundaries.
The Mirror tool will mirror selected UVs while constraining the UVs within their bounds.
Moving to the UV edge will move the entire uv to the 0-1 uv boundary. This is useful for aligning faces with the edges of textures.
4. Expand UV tools
Square Fit Unwrap will try to expand your selection into a square. It's useful for unrolling patches, and is particularly useful when unrolling pipelines.
Blender Unwrap is the standard Blender unwrap tool.
More unwrapped UV tools are planned, such as planar and box mapping options. Please stay tuned!
5. UV transmission tools
The UV transfer tool essentially allows you to copy and paste UVs to different locations. The top line is the coordinates representing the uv clipboard. You can enter them manually or use Grab from Selection to save the UV boundaries. The Move to Selection button will map the saved UVs to your selection.
6. Hot Tools
Hotspots are a technique for quickly assigning UVs to UV islands by referencing a predefined UV atlas. The DreamUV Hotspot tool will try to find an appropriately sized rectangle in the atlas and fit it into the mesh geometry.
In order for the hotspot tool to work properly, an atlas needs to be created. It's just a grid of rectangles of various sizes. For example:
This is just a sample layout, any layout should work.
Remember to scale the atlas geometry to similar proportions as you wish to apply the uvs to the final mesh. Also make sure the atlas object scale is set to 1 to ensure the dimensions are transferred correctly.
To hotspot a mesh, simply select the face you want to hotspot and click the Hotspot button. Multiple clicks will cycle the tool through different variations and UV placements. The mesh will be divided into UV islands, using hard edges and seams to create individual hot spots. It is highly recommended to manually place additional seams to guide the tool and try to divide the geometry into rectangular pieces.
Original link: DreamUV concise tutorial—BimAnt