UV Unwrap In Blender – How To Manually Unwrap UVs

 

You want to unwrap UVs in Blender. You want to lay them out neatly, exactly the way you want. That’s all you want to do… but you have no idea how!

This is pretty much everyone’s experience the first time they touch UVs in Blender — especially if you came from Maya.

In this article, I’ll put together a guide on how to manually unwrap UVs in Blender exactly the way you want.

If your UV unwraps in Blender keep coming out a mess, I hope this article helps.

 

By the way, this article won’t cover “what even is a UV, and how should I unwrap it?” I’d like to write about that in a separate article at some point, but for now, please check out the following as a reference on what UVs actually are. ↓

 

 

Unwrapping UVs in Blender — Key Points to Know!

Before you start unwrapping UVs in Blender, there are a few key points worth keeping in mind.

I’ll go through each one in order.

 

1) UV Sync Selection got a major overhaul in Blender 5.0! on by default now

Up until now, unwrapping UVs in Blender was built around toggling “UV Sync Selection” on and off as you worked.

This “UV Sync Selection” feature was what made UV unwrapping in Blender so confusing — but Blender 5.0 fundamentally overhauled it, and now UV Sync Selection is on by default!

And you can now do your UV unwrapping work while staying in sync-selection mode the whole time!

 

What this basically means is that it now behaves almost exactly like Maya’s UV Editor.

For those who’ve been using Blender since earlier versions, this might come as a bit of a shock. Surprising, right? If you started with Blender 5.0 or later, you don’t need to worry about how things used to be.

Either way, UV unwrapping in Blender got easier, and that makes everyone happy~

 

By the way, UV Sync Selection is this button sitting in the top-left corner of the UV Editor.

Once you confirm it’s turned blue (on), it looks like the standard going forward will be to leave it alone from here on and just unwrap your UVs. There’s even a chance the button itself might disappear entirely someday.

So, what this comes down to is: in both Blender and Maya, selecting a vertex, edge, or face in the UV Editor now also selects that same vertex, edge, or face in the 3D viewport, in sync~

That’s the first thing to get straight!

 

2) Start UV unwrapping in Blender with “mark seams → unwrap”

Doing manual, exactly-how-you-want UV unwrapping in Blender.

Let’s start by learning “mark seams → unwrap” as the way to begin UV unwrapping~

 

There are several other ways to unwrap a 3D model’s UVs, but to achieve “manual, exactly the way you want,” you need a solid grasp of this basic flow: “mark seams → unwrap.”

“Seam” translates to 縫い目 in Japanese, and conceptually it’s roughly the same as a UV cut.

However, Blender’s UV Editor doesn’t have a “Cut” option in its basic menu the way Maya does.

The basic workflow is: on the object in the 3D viewport, mark seams on the edges where you want to cut the UVs, then unwrap the whole mesh.

Once unwrapped, the UV chunks cut apart by the seams — called “islands” — will be scattered across the UV Editor.

 

From there, spreading out the UVs, splitting islands further, and arranging everything neatly is what the actual UV unwrapping work is about.

Doing all of this UV unwrapping work using only Blender’s built-in features takes a fair amount of effort, so I’d recommend making heavy use of the handy UV-related add-ons I’ll introduce later on.

 

3) Set scale to 1 before unwrapping UVs in Blender

One last thing you shouldn’t forget.

Make sure to apply the object’s scale to 1 before unwrapping UVs in Blender~!

 

If you unwrap UVs while the object’s scale value isn’t 1, things will come out wrong.

If the size of your polygons and the size of your unwrapped UV faces seem oddly mismatched, the scale value is almost always the cause.

So, before unwrapping UVs, make sure to check your object’s scale value!

 

Next, I’ll introduce some recommended add-ons for unwrapping UVs in Blender.

 

 

Unwrapping UVs in Blender — Recommended Add-ons

I think the smart move is to lean on add-ons from the start if you want full control over your UV unwrapping in Blender.

Here are my personal recommendations:

Up until now, UVToolkit has been my main add-on, but as of August 2026, UVToolkit is currently pending extension review.

So going forward, I’m planning to mainly use UniV and Mio3 UV, which are already published as extensions, while also making use of handy features from UVToolkit and TexTools, and reaching for Blender’s built-in features where appropriate~

 

Next, I’ll go through what each add-on can do and their handy features.

Hope this helps as a reference for choosing your add-ons.

 

1) Extensions: UniV and Mio3 UV

The “UV Sync Selection” feature, which used to be the crux of the whole UV workflow, was fundamentally overhauled starting in Blender 5.0.

Because of this, UV-unwrapping add-ons that were built around the old behavior have had to catch up, and some haven’t finished updating for the new system yet.

Amid all that, there are add-ons that let you unwrap UVs while keeping UV Sync Selection on the whole time!

Those are UniV and Mio3 UV~

Both are available as extensions, and you can check their documentation for how to use them on their respective sites.

 

 

Both of these are genuinely well-made add-ons — between the two of them, pretty much every feature you’d want for UV unwrapping is covered.

Here’s a rundown of the UV unwrapping features both add-ons have in common:

 

I think the best way to get the full picture is to check the official documentation — it also has walkthroughs with GIF animations.

Even though the two add-ons can do almost the same things, there are some things unique to each one, and even shared features sometimes behave slightly differently.

Since we’re here, let me briefly introduce the features that are unique to each of UniV and Mio3 UV.

 

What Only UniV Can Do

●Snap-move islands to elements with Alt+V

Pressing the shortcut Alt+V lets you select vertices or edges of a UV island and snap-move them onto the vertices of other islands. It’s smooth and easy to use — seems like a genuinely handy feature.

 

●Manage UV maps right in the UV Editor

You can manage UV maps from the Object Data tab in the Properties Editor, but it’s really nice having the UV map shown somewhere easy to see, right inside the UV Editor.

In Blender, the default UV map name is “UVMap,” but objects created in Maya actually default to “map1” instead.

When you merge objects with differently-named UVs, you end up with an object that automatically has multiple UV maps.

Back when I was moving between Maya and Blender for work, I once didn’t pay attention to UV map names and, partway through, panicked thinking “wait, did my unwrapped UVs just vanish?!”

Having the UV map displayed somewhere visible makes it so you can spot that kind of thing right away, which is great!

 

●Check for UV overlaps and distortion with Inspect

You can use the Inspect button to check for UVs that are overlapping or flipped.

Sometimes UVs end up flipped without you realizing it, so this could be a genuinely useful feature to have.

 

●Automatic packing

UV packing itself is already possible with Blender’s built-in Pack Islands, but it’s easy to forget it’s there since it’s a bit hidden away — having this feature somewhere more visible might mean you actually end up using it more.

 

What Only Mio3 UV Can Do

●Adjust guide texture exposure

This one’s a real treat~!

This used to be on my list of “things you can do in Maya’s UV Editor but not in Blender’s,” but now that Mio3 UV has implemented it, you can do it in Blender too!

If the guide texture stays too bright, it strains your eyes, so I really hope everyone makes use of this for more comfortable work.

 

●Select the four corner UVs to force an island into a rectangle

In the GIF, a round island is forcibly turned into a rectangle, but I think this feature is really meant for UV islands that don’t quite fit neatly, letting you make better use of your UV space.

Something like a sleeve or a leg area seems like a good candidate for this.

Keep in mind that since it’s forcing a non-rectangular island into a rectangle, this will cause some UV distortion.

 

●Display padding

Another handy one~

If you don’t leave enough (but not too much) padding between UV islands, texture color from a neighboring island can bleed through when viewed on the 3D model.

According to Mio3 UV’s documentation, this is only meant as a rough guide, but even having a rough guide helps a lot.

 

●Unwrap the 3D object into the same shape as its UVs

I haven’t actually put this feature to use yet, but I thought it was interesting enough to mention.

It’s the kind of feature that visually shows you what a UV really is!

 

That wraps up the feature overview for UniV and Mio3 UV.

Which add-on you use really comes down to personal preference, and there’s nothing wrong with using both!

 

 

2) Extension (Awaiting Review): UVToolkit

UVToolkit is the UV-unwrapping add-on I personally relied on as my main tool for a long time.

Back when UV Sync Selection was a real pain to deal with, this add-on was a genuine lifesaver. Due to various circumstances, though, the original developer became unable to keep updating it, and for a while volunteers were putting out an extension version of UVToolkit.

However, it looks like the recent overhaul to UV Sync Selection caused some complications, and it’s currently sitting in review-pending status.

There’s no guarantee it’ll work properly, but a version compatible with Blender 5.0 and later does seem to exist — you can download it here and install it manually to use it.

 

I tried it out a bit, but in Ver. 2.1.4, the unwrapping features didn’t work while UV Sync Selection was on.

That said! There’s still a reason to keep using UVToolkit.

It’s because these two features are still usable:

Let’s go through them in order.

 

Bring up a dedicated UV pie menu with Shift+F

Pressing Shift+F brings up a dedicated UV pie menu.

What’s especially handy is that Mark Seam, Clear Seam, and Unwrap are all accessible from here.

As explained in Point 2) of Blender UV Unwrapping Tips, “mark seams → unwrap” is the basic workflow for UV work in Blender, and you often end up re-marking seams and re-unwrapping multiple times to check how the UVs are laying out.

That’s why having all of this grouped into one pie menu is so convenient.

I also often use Project from View from the bottom part of the menu to partially unwrap UVs. For things like a character’s face, I sometimes unwrap the UVs from the front view first, then adjust them to make painting textures easier.

Having the features I use most all grouped together like this is really handy~

 

Select and move UV islands with the F key

Pressing the F key while hovering over a UV island lets you select that island and immediately start moving it.

It’s simple, but once you try it, it’s incredibly convenient~

 

So, I fully intend to keep using UVToolkit going forward!

 

3) TexTools, published on GitHub

You can download TexTools from GitHub.

TexTools’ features and usage are explained on its official page. (It’s in English, but auto-translation gets the gist across just fine.)

 

I think this is another add-on a lot of people have relied on over the years.

Version 1.6.11, downloadable from GitHub, appears to support Blender 5.0 and later, letting you use its various features even with UV Sync Selection turned on.

It’s a long-standing add-on, and almost everything TexTools can do, UniV or Mio3 UV can do too.

That said! There’s still a reason to keep using TexTools.

It’s because there’s one truly unique thing only TexTools can do.

This is a bit of a tangent from UV unwrapping itself, but TexTools’ baking feature is genuinely useful — it’s worth installing TexTools for this alone.

Let me give it a quick rundown.

 

Bake textures

TexTools has a texture baking menu.

Looking at the official page’s explanation, you can see it supports a pretty wide range of bake types.

 

I actually tried using TexTools to bake AO (ambient occlusion)…

And it was incredibly convenient!

I’ve written about baking AO in Blender in a separate article, but TexTools skips past most of what’s described there and lets you bake AO with basically one click.

 

Once you’ve experienced AO baking with TexTools, it’s hard to go back — that’s how convenient I think it is. So even setting aside its UV-unwrapping features, I’ll keep using it purely as a baking add-on~!

 

 

4) Some of Blender’s built-in features are handy too

Finally, let’s look at Blender’s built-in features — the non-add-on side of things.

Honestly, relying only on what Blender has out of the box makes it tough to unwrap UVs exactly the way you want. Pinning things one by one is a hassle and kind of fiddly…

But don’t underestimate it — Blender’s built-in feature set actually has plenty of handy tools too.

There was a feature I personally consider essential that none of the add-ons had, so when I went looking for it, it turned out to already be built into Blender’s standard toolset.

So, let’s go through them.

 

Average Islands Scale

An essential feature!

Based on the polygon area of your object, this automatically evens out the size of UV islands so their UV area ratio stays roughly consistent.

As you edit UVs, individual islands tend to end up all sorts of different sizes, so having a feature that evens out the ratio is incredibly useful.

There’s a UV-editing technique where you deliberately make certain UVs (like the face, for example) larger to fit more texture detail — but even for that, it’s easier to start from an averaged, consistent ratio across the whole thing first.

 

Pack Islands

Lays out the selected UV islands within the 0–1 UV coordinate range.

This is the so-called UV packing feature. There are actually various add-ons that handle everything from unwrapping through packing automatically, and dskjal’s site covers a few of them too.

 

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of automatic packing, so I always arrange my UVs by hand.

That’s mainly because arranging UVs myself makes it easier to paint textures afterward — so if you’re doing everything in 3D paint, or only using Substance Painter, automatic packing works perfectly fine.

The standard UV packing tends to leave wasted space, so if you want clean auto-packed layouts, it’s worth looking into other add-ons as well.

 

By the way, if you click Pack Islands from the UV menu, a popup opens — unchecking rotation there before packing lets you pack UV islands without rotating them.

 

Rip Move UVs

Selecting vertices, edges, or faces and using Rip Region and Move UVs lets you cut the UVs apart while moving them.

After working through “mark seams → unwrap” to split things into UV islands, sometimes you notice a small mistake in where the mesh was split… and re-marking seams and unwrapping all over again feels like a hassle…

That’s exactly when Rip Move UVs comes in handy — a quick way to cut UVs on the spot!

It’s perfect for small island fixes, or for quickly unwrapping simple objects that don’t really need seams. It’s even more convenient if you assign it to a shortcut for easy access.

 

Projection menu items like Project from View

Projection is what’s called “UV mapping” in Maya. By default, the following projection methods are available:

• Smart UV Project
• Cube Projection
• Cylinder Projection
• Sphere Projection
• Project from View

The one I use most often is Project from View.

If you have UVToolKit installed, you can also run it from the dedicated UV pie menu via Shift+F.

 

 

 

Summary: Make the Most of Handy Features to Unwrap UVs Exactly How You Want

That wraps up my guide to unwrapping UVs exactly the way you want in Blender~

Keeping these three points in mind will go a long way when unwrapping UVs in Blender.

 

Also, if you want a stress-free UV unwrapping experience, I’d recommend leaning on add-ons from the very start.

In this article, I introduced the following add-ons (plus Blender’s built-in features):

 

Whether you use UniV or Mio3 UV, you can unwrap UVs comfortably either way, and layering in the handy features from UVToolkit and TexTools makes things even smoother. On top of that, Blender’s built-in features have plenty to offer too.

UV unwrapping is fundamentally a task full of tedious little steps, so I want to make full use of whatever handy features are available.

Building a comfortable workflow — one that trims away the tedium by drawing on various add-ons and Blender’s built-in features — is, I think, the first step toward unwrapping UVs exactly the way you want.

I hope this article helps anyone struggling with UV unwrapping~

 

 

I also cover other handy add-ons in my article on Blender Modeling [Addendum] — even more comfort upgrades in there!