ZBGs Mastering The UV Master by Pablo-Munoz-G PDF

A GUIDE TO: MASTERING THE UV MASTER By Pablo Muñoz Gómez
A GUIDE TO:
MASTERING
THE UV MASTER By Pablo Muñoz Gómez
www.ZBrushGuides.com 1
Contents Testing head Posed quick unwrap

Loading Testing head original
10
10
Working on clone 10
Intro 3
Check seams 11
Unwrap again 12
Welcome 3
Density 12
Who is this for and what to expect 3
Protect / Attract 14
What UV Master is and what is not 3
Creating clear seems with polygroups 15
Balancing/optimizing Texel density 17
Why UV Master? 4
UVs Copy/Paste 18
Transferring maps 19
Important concepts 4
Other UV Master features 19

UV Mapping 4
UV coordinates 4
Use existing UV seems 19
Seams 4
Load and save control maps 19
Unwrapping 5
UV Island / Shells 5
Put the nice UVs to work 20
UV Packing or UV Layout 5
Texel Density 6
Create texture from polypaint 20
Transfer texture to polypaint 20
ZBrush palettes involved 6
Bake texture and generate maps 21
Quick and easy 7

Golden nuggets 21
Set resolution for UV map 7

How to export a UV reference layout 21
Unwrapping the model 7
Layers to check texture distortion 22
Checking UVs with texture 7
Hrepeat, Vrepeat, switch U<>V, Flip U and Flip V 22
Wasted pixels 8
Workflow summary graph 22

UV Masters is great but be nice 8
Conclusion 23
High poly count 9
Bridges, tunnels and holes 9
Final thoughts 23
Mastering the UV Master 10
100% Automatic process 10
easily, avoidable mistakes.
I created this guide to give you a broader understanding

of what the UV Master can do for you as well as providing
you with a simple workflow based on the things what have
worked for me when creating UVs within ZBrush.
I hope that by explaining some key concepts and showing

you my workflow, you’ll be able to leverage the full potential
of the UV Master; Ultimately speeding up your workflow and
allowing you more room for creative exploration.
Who is this for and what to expect
I structured this guide for someone relatively new to UV

mapping in general, with a heavy focus on the awesomeness
of the ZBrush UV Master Plugin.
I’ll attempt to clarify some key concepts and common

terminology, to help you dive into the UV mapping process
with a bit more confidence. Like in most of my other eBooks,
you can expect practical examples to illustrate different
ideas. For the more advanced ZBrush user, the coloured
text provides a way to quickly scan this document.
What UV Master is and what is not
I have to say, that I enjoy the challenge of figuring out how to

produce a good UV map on a complex object. But don’t get
Intro me wrong, I wouldn’t do this on a daily basis and certainly
not for all of my meshes… just the cool ones, maybe. What I
Welcome am trying to say is that, for some 3D objects, I would prefer
to spend some time optimising and editing the UV layout, to
UV Master is probably one of the most frequently used avoid headaches later in the texturing process.
ZBrush plugins, and this is for a good reason: it removes a
great deal of technical processes, allowing you to spend The first concept I want to make sure is clear before moving
more time in the creative realm. It is also the answer to how on, is precisely what the confusing previous paragraph was
can I automate this tedious process of unwrapping 3D object? referring to: The UV Master plugin is a FANTASTIC tool to
automate your process and create UVs for your 3D objects.
I am a huge fan of the UV Master. We have shared a lot of However, it is not a UV editor, which means that it has
moments, from epic crashes that destroy everything, to limitations to edit the UVs once they are created.
surprisingly near perfect UVs, with a single click. Fortunately,
the “bad” moments are not as bad and are mostly due to Having said that, the results of the automated process are so
good that editing the UVs shouldn’t concern you too much. In
this guide, we’ll focus on things we can do to make sure the your objects. The complexity and length of this process will
automatic process delivers the best results, so that we can vary depending on the scope of your project. In a nutshell, it’s
get on with our project. the process of mapping a 3D object into a 2D space.
Why UV Master?
I like UV Master for several reasons. If I had to pick the top
three, they would be:
I don’t have to leave ZBrush
I really don’t mind using various software to produce a single

piece if they are necessary, but the more I stay within ZBrush, UV coordinates
the more creative I feel. This might not be a big deal for many
people, but for me this is a huge bonus. These are coordinates in the 2D space, so that the 3D
application can interpret the 2D data in a 3D space. There
It is REALLY an automatic process. are plenty of forums where people discuss why is this called
UV and not XY, I’ve even heard the statement: “V is obviously
There are several UV mapping tools out there that are for Vertical and U is for… ummm, you know... the other one”,
“automatic”, but the couple that I have tried, I ended up doing which is funny, but honestly I have never lost sleep over this.
a lot of additional things which make them feel very manual. All you really need to know here, is that XYZ are used for
With UV Master I can seriously rely on the click on ONE 3D space (sometimes referred to as World Space). To make
button to create evenly distributed UVs that are more than a clear distinction, UVW is designated to the 2D “Texture”
enough to move on to the next stage of my project. space.
It is super fast!
Aside from the obvious cases where you have heaps of

polygons, UV mapping complex shapes with the UV Master Given that in a 2D space, there is no need for a third axis we
is seriously fast. can ignore the third letter “W” and we are left with UV. Finally,
to give the earlier statement some credit, since I heard it I
always associate V in the UV coordinates with Vertical, which
Important concepts is… convenient.
Let’s kick this off with some good old terms and what they Seams
mean. As I mentioned earlier, these concepts are widely
applicable to the process of UV mapping in general, but I’ll To me, this concept is the easier to extrapolate to a real-
try to constrain the explanation to what is more relevant for world example (also because the meaning is literal). Think
the UV Master Plugin. about the seams of a jacket, for instance. If you where to cut
it and dissolve all the stitches, you’ll end up with a bunch of
UV Mapping loose pieces that you can lay down flat on a table.
UV Mapping is the whole process of creating usable UV for So in a 3D object, seams are simply the cuts you do (or UV
Master does for you) to determine where the object is going various pieces that are on the table: sleeves, pockets, etc.
to be “broken” in order to display it in a 2D space.
UV Packing or UV Layout
This is, simply put, the process of arranging the UV shells, in

such a way that they encompass the most amount of space
in the UV map. This is a very important step because it will
establish the amount of texture information you can have per
each island.
For example, you can have a simple cube with seams and
properly unwrapped that looks like this:
Unwrapping
This is the process of creating a map for the 3D object. In

other words, to “unfold” a 3D object to see all of its polygons in
a flat image. To continue with the jacket analogy, unwrapping
is the process of removing the stitches and place all the
resulting pieces of fabric over a flat table.
The unwrapping part is spot on! The seams are good too
since they allow the program to unfold the 3D object and still
keep it together as one piece (one UV shell).
But there is a lot of space that is wasted. A “better packing”

of this cube’s UV shell, would be something like this:
UV Island / Shells
UV islands or shells (sometimes

also referred to as polygon
islands) are the various pieces
you get from cutting a 3D
object through its seams and
unwrapping. Now that I think
about it, the jacket analogy
works for most concepts.
The UV islands/shells are the
Now there is less wasted space but we have too many seams for game assets, for instance).
and might be hard to create a continuous texture…
In summary, the Texel Density is a combination of the size
So in this particular case, a good compromise regarding the of your texture map and the distribution of your UV shells.
layout or “UV packing” might be this:
Texel Density
I’d say that this concept falls more on the technical side of
ZBrush palettes involved
things. Texel is an abbreviation of Texture Element, which In this tutorial we’ll take a look at various features within the
is a fancy way to call a unit in the texture space. The way I following ZBrush sub-palettes:
arrange this concept in my head is a bit primitive by I think it
works: a texture contains texels and a texel is a “box” that ZPlugin palette > UV Master
contains pixels. Tool palette > UV Map
Tool palette > Texture
Texture palette
If you accept my simplistic definition of what a texel is, then

we can assume a couple of important things: texels will
determine the resolution of your texture (the bigger the
“box” the more pixels you can fit in it) and also it will serve as
a measuring unit to maintain consistency and scale across
textures (if you are part of a team of artists producing textures
Quick and easy Checking UVs with texture
To check if the generated UVs are ok, we can add a quick

Before getting into the more detailed
texture to see how well distributed the polygons are and
explanation of how the UV Master works,
our texel density (resolution). Under the tool palette, find the
I thought we could start with a quick
Texture map sub-palette and expand it. Click on the empty
step-by-step “pre-tutorial” to warm
thumbnail and select Texture 19, you’ll see straight away
up. The idea is to show you how quick
the projection of this texture on the model. At this point, these
and easy this process is and to prove
types of checkered textures are great to judge the quality
the point of how automatic the
of our UVs, because you can easily see if the squares are
whole thing is.
stretching or if there is too much variation in size.
Go ahead and load the
Testing_head_posed.ztl from TEXTURE
the resources folder that you
got with this PDF. Drag it into your
19
canvas and enter edit mode (T).
Set resolution for UV map
Let’s begin by setting the size of out

UV map. Expand the UV Map sub-
palette and you’ll see a slider call:
UV map size, where you can change
the resolution of the map. For this
object we’ll set it to 1024 (you can
change it later if you need to).
Unwrapping the model
Dock the ZPlugin palette to the right or left tray of your

interface for easy access. Expand the UV Master sub-
palette, make sure “Symmetry” and “polygroups” are OFF
and simply click the “Unwrap” button. Let ZBrush do its
thing and you’ll end up with a nice unwrapped model.
Wasted pixels Anyway, we’ll take a look at how to optimise this later on. This
concludes the quick and easy pre-tutorial, and this is good
What we got from this one-button process is excellent, enough if you just want to create quick UV maps for your
considering the amount of time we spent. The most important sketches to be able to bake some maps or export the mesh
thing, is that the polygons are evenly distributed and for the to Substance Painter for instance. ;)
most part their size in the UV space is very similar. However,
there is a lot of wasted pixels that we could be using to pack To give you an idea of how the UVs are working, I took the
more texture information. model with the UV map we got from a quick unwrap, sent
it to Substance Painter, did a two minutes paint job, and this
Under the UV Master sub-palette, click on the “Flatten” is what I got:
button, this will unfold our 3D object into the 2D space. As you
can see there is a lot of space
that we are not using and that
is a shame. Remember the
jacket analogy? Well, imagine
that you have a sheet of pure
gold and you want to make a
jacket out of gold (bare with
me...). Now, imagine that the
sheet of gold (our UV map) is a
perfect square and we need to lay down all of our pieces of
the jacket to trace them on the sheet of gold. If the UV shell
we just obtained from unwrapping our test object was the
piece of the jacket, look at how much gold we are wasting!!!!!
(I know this is a silly analogy, but when it comes to texturing,
every pixel counts… so treat them as gold!).
UV Masters is great but be nice

Ok, at this point we know that it works and it works well. Now
we can start to dig deeper into the UV Master features to
improve the quality of our automatic UVs.
So before we start with the detailed step-by-step tutorial, Master will be like “No problem give me, 0.5 seconds” and
let’s talk briefly about a few things to bare in mind when you’ll get something like this:
using UV Master.
High poly count
UV Master allows you to unwrap models with a lot of

polygons. This is great because doing this process manually
on a very dense mesh, would be a nightmare! However, the
lower the polygon count the faster the UV Master will be.
Now, this is not terrible for what we need but not the best…
Regardless of how useless this UV mapping is, the UV
Master did ITS job flawlessly. If you want something different
and more useful, is YOUR job to help the UV Master out (and
we’ll take a look at a few ways to do that in a second).
This is the a new UV map resulting from the same one-click

operation, only giving the UV Master a little guidance to
better do its job:
I rarely create UVs on a very dense mesh. If I have a lot of

polygons, I either stay with polypaint, or do a quick Zremesher,
subdivide, project details and unwrap the low poly.
Bridges, tunnels and holes
UV Master has a slightly harder

time with complex meshes
containing bridges, tunnels and
holes. The job of the UV Master
is very simple: to quickly give
you an optimal UV map for your
models. So when you go to the
Unwrap button and ask - “Hey
UV Master, I got this tube model…
work your magic please”. The UV
head to a real time engine

Mastering the UV Master but we want to keep
the details. We need to
100% Automatic process create an optimised UV
map so that we can bake
Let’s dive into a more manual UV unwrapping process, so the maps (I won’t get into
that we can understand the fully automated nature of UV creating maps like normal
Master. and displacement in this
guide, that is in fact a
As I mentioned before, the act of creating UV maps using UV whole new tutorial).
Master, is truly automatic. However there are some manual
processes that we can do to maximise its potential. Work on clone (because of the subdivision levels)
Don’t worry, when I say manual processes I just mean that we From the ZPlugin palette, expand the UV
can spent a little extra time to set up our model to get a better Master sub-palette and simply click the
result. The whole UV map generation is still 100% automatic. “Unwrap” button (you’ll get an error).
Let’s get started with the more in-depth part of this guide.
Testing_head_Posed quick unwrap
Alright, from the little warm up

tutorial we did before, we got The reason why you got an error, is because the testing
this UV map: object we just loaded has multiple subdivision levels and
UV Master needs an object to be in the lowest subdivision
Not bad, the UV Master did its level to start the process. But don’t worry, we can work on
job and as expected we end a clone of the object. You can actually move to the lowest
up with relatively nicely sized subdivision level and unwrap from there but is substantially
and well distributed polygons. better (safer) to work on the clone.
There are, however, a few
things that are not ideal to Just click on the button called “work on clone”. A new Tool
comfortably texture our model, will be automatically created in the lowest subdivision level
so let’s improve this process. and you can Unwrap here.
Load Testing_head_original
Load the Testing_head_original.ztl, drag it into the canvas

and enter edit mode. This test model doesn’t have a pose yet,
but it does have more details in the subdivision levels. UV
mapping is obviously not just so we can paint a texture in our
model, you also need nice UVs to bake maps like normal
and displacements.
Let’s say we want to export the low poly version of this testing
For the first try, leave it has no idea that what we are modelling is a creature, for
the Symmetry and example.
Polygroup OFF. With
symmetry on, UV Master For the UV Master these two models are really the same:
will try to make the UV
island symmetrical and
the polygroups option
will create UV shells from
the polygroups. At this point we don’t have UV islands/shells
or polygroups so just turn them OFF for now.
Hit the unwrap button. You should get something like this
(after pressing flatten button to check).
They are complex forms with a bunch of polygons arranged

in a particular way to describe a volume. In the same way that
you and me can’t really say where the “face” of the image 1
is, UV Master does not know where the face of our creature
(image 2) is.
With that in mind, let’s check the seams. There is a button

called “check seams” at the bottom of the UV Master sub-
palette. Click on it and you’ll see some orange lines appear
on the model (they are ultimately temporary polypaint, so
if you have a texture ON, make sure you turn it OFF or you
won’t be able to see them).
Check seams
Now it’s time to see where UV Master cut our model, this
is a fundamental step towards a better UV layout. As I
mentioned before, the job of the UV Master is to create the
best possible scenario with the information we give it, but
This orange lines represent the cuts or seams that UV Master What’s important here is that if we are happy with 1 single
decided were the best option for our head. The trick with the UV shell, symmetry OFF might be a better option since the
seams is that we should avoid any visible or important area, UV shell is better placed encompassing more area of the
so a seam, right through the middle of the face is not ideal. texture space (more gold if you remember the golden jacket
analogy). But, our test model came out pretty good, so let’s
Unwrap again move on
Let’s enable the Symmetry (within the UV Master sub- Density

palette) and click the Unwrap button again. Depending on
the model, the UV Master might decide that it needs to cut Ok so now we have a UV map
up the model in more pieces to try to preserve the symmetry and is looking pretty good,
so you might end up with more than 1 UV shell: chuck in a checkered texture
to check the texel density.
Everything looks very well
distributed so if we put in a
tileable texture, we should get
a nice base for our colour.
From the texture map thumbnail, click on import and

select the Skin_tileable_texture.jpg. It looks something like
this:
Cool! This is getting somewhere… BUT I

just want to create a nice render out of this
model and the areas underneath the bust
are not even going to be visible. Also, I’d
like to have more resolution in the face
area, especially around the eyes.
Sometimes there is no change at all, with the UV seams This is where the concept of texel density
remaining in the same place with one single UV shell. With starts to weigh in. UV Master allows us
the symmetry on, the UV Master will try to place the single to control the density with polypaint,
UV shell in the UV map in a way that has symmetry (could be simply painting more resolution where
symmetry in U or V). we want it! THIS IS FANTASTIC!
Note: in some cases, adding more density in areas will result Since I want a lot of details around the face, I want to paint
in other areas with less resolution. with 4x this area. Click on 4x and paint where you need to
have additional resolution. When you start painting you’ll
Ok, let’s do this! Change the skin texture we previously see that you are painting with a bright green. If you select 2x
applied for the checkered one (texture 19). The squares for instance, the green colour with be faint and this is good
displayed in our head are relatively all the same size, similar to better transition between high and low resolution areas.
texel density. This means we have the same resolution in the
nose that in the back of the neck. I know that in my render, the back and bottom of the bust won’t
be visible, so I can click on /4 to decrease the resolution in
those areas. The colour now will be light blue.
So you’ll have a green and blue polypaint on your model that

might end up looking something that like this:
Go ahead and enable the switch in the UV Master sub-palette

called: Enable control painting. As soon as you do that, a few
extra controls will be available. Now, select the standard
brush from the brush palette and then click on the switch
called “Density”.
Make sure to click unwrap again to tell UV Master to process

the mesh with the new density information. Also turn on the
texture map again to check the new texel density.
The UV Master will automatically “convert” our standard

brush into a “density brush” (not really, it just disables Zadd
and enables RGB). Next and below the “density” switch there
are numbers with a “/” and “x” next to them. These are
basically to decrease or increase the density… so 4x is 4
times more the resolution we currently have, /2 is 2 times
less the resolution we have, etc.
As you can see there are more squares that sit around the Protect / Attract
eyes and mouth now. On the contrary, at the back we have
just a few. Switch back to the tileable skin texture we tested In my opinion, this is one of the most powerful features of
before and see what happens. the UV Master, but it is widely misunderstood. This feature
also uses polypaint colours like the Density process, to assign
areas in your model that you want to protect or attract the
placement of the seams.
The reason I said it is misunderstood, is because this is not

meant to be a way to draw line for the UV Master to follow
and cut your mesh where you paint. As we discussed before,
the UV Master is an automatic process and if you start to
rely on your ability to place the seams manually, then it
becomes kind of manual.
So what is this then?

Much better. There is plenty more details around the face
which is what we need. The way I think about it is kind of weird, but i’ll try to explain:
Also, if you remember, I mentioned before that having “cuts” I think about the protect and attract feature, as the NON
running in the middle of the face wasn’t great. But I didn’t smoking and smoking sections of a bar. The seams are
get into too much details, because we got a nice UV map in like the cigarette smoke, very elusive, adaptive and hard
our first try. However, since we started editing the density, to contain. So... the “protect” feature is the Non-smoking
we instructed the UV Master to re-arrange the polygons to section, because we don’t want to have any smoke (seams)
give us more texel density in certain areas. Therefore, the around there. The attract feature would be the smoking
UV layout and seams have also changed. area where we tolerate the smokers (seams). The thing is,
the smoke might go into the non-smoking area because of
the layout of the bar (the model). So, we cannot control the
smoke or where it goes, all we can do is try to change or
improve the “layout” of the smoking and non-smoking areas
so that the smokers don’t annoy the non-smokers.
In other words, we can only paint areas in our model to

suggest to the UV Master where we would be ok or not
with the placement of the seams, we cannot draw a “path”
for the UV Master to follow. Ultimately the UV Master will
decide (and I think this is great) where would be the most
efficient area to place the seams.
So, we got what we wanted in terms of texel density / Where were we? Oh yes, the tutorial… So, now that we have
resolution, but there are still some ugly seams running right an idea of what this feature does, we can then edit how the
across the face (although is better than what we had before). seams are placed in our test object.
The next step is to try to remove those seams while keeping
the density we need. Go ahead and click in the “enable control painting” (if is not
on) and switch on the protect feature. Using the standard Creating clear seems with polygroups
brush, start painting the areas you want to try to avoid the
seams going through. What would the beautiful journey of learning be, if there
were no contradictions? I have been going on a rant, for the
Sometimes adding either a protect or attract area should be most part of this tutorial, on how automatic the UV Master is.
enough for the UV Master but if you want to give it an extra Now I’m going to tell you that there are a couple of manual
hand you can do both. For the sake of this tutorial, I’ll also process that we should embrace, if we want to achieve
paint some areas to attract the seams. Something like this: “maximum potential” from the UV Master.
Let me bring back the

golden jacket analogy. If we
were to unwrap the jacket
without “pre-processing” it,
is likely that we end up with
a single UV shell similar to
the UV Map we have so far
for our testing object head.
See how much wasted

space there is in this new
jacket example compared to the one with multiple UV shells?
We are missing out on gold! The same is true for our head.
So, let’s go ahead and manually assign the seams exactly

where we want to cut up our model. To do this, you need to
shift your concepts of seams a little bit. Instead of thinking
That’s it, we can click unwrap again. Make sure you turn about cuts, think about the actual UV island/shells you
off the texture if you have it on and switch on the “check want, for example: We probably want a single island for the
seams” to have a look at what the result is. entire face, maybe another one for the neck, one for the rest
of the head and perhaps one for the chest and ear...
Logically, the easiest way to determine these different what we got:

islands is by assigning polygroups. Go ahead and start
assigning polygroups (one per each island).
You can use the selection tools to hide and the group visible,
or the Zmodeler with the polygroup action.
Definitely much better. Multiple UV shells are easily to

arrange in the texture space giving us more texel density.
UV border value (distance between islands)
There is a setting in the UV map sub-palette called UV border

value. This allows you to control the distance between
the UV islands borders. If you change it, you need to click
Now that we have our unwrap again to apply the
polygroups, simply ask the changes. Tweak this value and
UV Master to please use your see what works for you.
polygroup by switching ON
the “polygroup” feature.
Click unwrap, UV Master
will now create UV islands/
shells for each polygroup,
so the border between
polygroups is the seam.
Flatten the model to see
Balancing/optimizing Texel density However, we can optimise our map a bit further. I created
an additional polygroup for the bottom of the test object
The UV map for our testing head is looking good, but there (which you won’t really see it in the final render) so that we
is still some space where we are wasting valuable pixel real can reduce the size of this island to allow for more texture
estate. space in the more important areas.
We could apply the same principle but scale up the most

important area like the face island.
When you are in the flatten state of the model, we can Just keep in mind that altering the optimal size of the UV
still use the selection and masking tools as well as the islands/shells, will in turn change the texel density and
Transpose line to move, scale and rotate the various pieces affect the texture resolution of the different parts our mesh.
of our UV to optimise the space. This could be a problem if the change in size is too abrupt
in visible areas and more evident if you are using tileable
Remember that the UV Master tries to distribute the vertices textures:
in the best way possible, while maintaining the proportion of
the polygons. But, since we used density, the island of the
face, is proportionally larger than the other UV islands to
“gather” more pixels.
In this case I do want more texture details in the face and If we turn ON the skin texture for example, you’ll see that the
I will create the textures by hand, so I’ll be careful with the UVs have been transferred and now we have a nice UV map
transitions. Therefore, I’ll arrange the UV map using the in our detailed model.
transpose line, to something like this:
UVs Copy/Paste
Great! We are near the end of the practical part of this

tutorial. You should now have a nice UV map to start creating
your textures. However, we’ve been working on a clone,
remember? And this clone has no details, so we need to
transfer the UV map from this clone into our real model
with all the subdivision levels.
Thanks to the UV Master, transferring maps is literally a

copy/paste operation.
Go ahead and click on the Copy UVs button from the UV

Master sub-palette. Then select the tool with our real model
with all the details and then click on Paste UVs.
To check UV Map (unfolded 3D object) you would click flatten

from the UV Master window, right? Unfortunately, this won’t
work now due to the multiple subdivision levels. If you want
to do some changes in the UVs after you have transferred
it, I suggest you work on another clone again and copy/
paste when you are happy.
If you just want to check the layout you can use the Morph Cool, this is the end of the Step-by-Step tutorial (sort of, I
UVs button from the UV map subpalette: know I branch out a bit in some areas). Now, for the third part
of the tutorial, I’ll show you additional features from the UV
Master that I rarely use, but it’s good to now they are there.
Other UV Master features

Use existing UV seems
This is what you would enable

before unwrapping if you
decide to cut up your model
in a separate application. For
instance, you can use Maya to
assign the edges you want to
use as seams and then in ZBrush
use the UV Master to unwrap
Transferring maps (head original to head posed) the model using the existing UV
seams from Maya.
Transferring maps doesn’t have to be only between the clone
and the original. You can transfer maps between models Load and save control maps
as long as they share the same topology. Just for practice,
copy the UVs from theTesting_head_original.ztl (from lowest Another nice little feature is the ability to save and load
subdivision level) load the Testing_head_posed_transfer.ztl your control maps. These maps are essentially storing the
and paste the UVs into this new model. polypaint information from the protect, attract and density
features. This could be useful if you, for instance, are happy
with the result of the UV unwrap, but want to experiment a bit
more to see what other values give you. In that scenario, you
can save your control map and then try other things. If you
are not happy with the new unwrap simply load your control
map and go back to your previous UV map.
As you can see the texture is applied the same to both

objects, even though the position of the polygons is different.
Once you are happy with your texture, go to the Texture Map
Put the nice UVs to work sub-palette and click on “Create texture from polypaint”.
Now, this tutorial is all about the UV Master and we are not
going to get into texturing and polypaint, we’ll leave that for
another tutorial. But it would be kind of pointless to learn
something that you might not know how to use, so let’s have
a look at what the next steps after texturing could be.
Create texture from polypaint
Move to the highest subdivision level and start painting your

textures using all the tools you want. Here is a quick test:
You’ll end up with a texture based on the polypaint you had

and if you click Morph UVs from the UV Map sub-palette,
you’ll be able to see how the polypaint you created in 3D, is
applied in the 2D space.
Transfer texture to polypaint
You can do the opposite and transfer a texture to polypaint

information, to use is as your starting point to create your
hand painted textures. For instance, you can go ahead and
load the Zombie_base_skin.jpg tileable texture.
From the Polypaint

sub-palette, go
ahead and click on
the Polypaint from
texture button. This
will transfer the
textures information
(as it is mapped in
the model thanks to
the UVs) to polypaint
colour.
NOTE: The more resolution or amount of details you texture

has, the more subdivision levels you might need to add, in Golden nuggets
order to transfer the texture accurately.
How to “export” a UV reference layout
Bake texture and generate maps
If you want to begin your texturing process in a different
As I mentioned earlier, this would be a topic for a new tutorial application like Photoshop for instance, we can export the
in itself. But just to give you a quick overview of how to UV map layout to have a guide of where each island is
generate and export maps, I’ll show you how to create and located.
export a Normal map from the head we are working on.
The easiest what to do this, is to create a new texture from
Make sure you are in the lowest subdivision level of the the UVs and export it as our reference image. We can “print”
mesh, then go to the Normal map sub-palette and double the wireframe into the UVs by simply turning ON Polyframe
check that “Adaptive” is ON. Click on “Generate Normal (Shift+F) before creating this reference UV layout.
map” and wait until ZBrush do its thing. Once the baking
process is complete, you’ll see the normal map in the With the polyframe on, click on the “New from UV check”
thumbnail. button from the Texture Map sub-palette.
To export it, we need to click on

“clone texture” so that is becomes
available in the texture palette.
From the texture palette, you can flip

the map vertically before exporting,
and simply click on the export button.
You are done!
Now you can clone texture and export it for texturing in

Photoshop for example.
Use layers from posed to original to check UV Map > Hrepeat, Vrepeat, switch U<>V, Flip U
texture distortion and Flip V
UV Master can unwrap and object with layers. This is This buttons under the UV map are awesome when working
particularly handy to check how a texture is distorted on a with tileable textures. They basically allow you to repeat
posed model. You can even create the UVs based on how the texture in the U or V axis, as well as flip UV map to re-
the model is affected by the layers. arrange the texture.
In other words, if you have a model with a pose in a layer,

you can unwrap the mesh with the layer at 0 or at 1 and get
completely different UV results.
Also very useful if you want to tweak a tileable texture before

applying it as a polypaint base.
Workflow summary graph

The following “graph” is more like a mind map, where I
have outlined and summarised the general workflow
discussed in this guide. This might be a good image to refer
to, while you get the hang of it. I have included it separately,
in the resources folder. You’ll find a print ready PDF called:
Mastering_the_UV_Master_Workflow_Summary.pdf
I usually add the pose of my models in a separate layer so I

can always come back and unwrap it later with the layer at 0
(with symmetry), if I need to.
Finally, if you have not subscribed to the ZBrushGuides

Conclusion newsletter yet, you can do it HERE - and receive updates,
be the first to know when I release a new resource, tutorial or
This concludes the UV Master guide. Before you close it, I’d course (coming soon).
just like to reiterate a couple of things:
Happy ZBrushing!
The steps and workflow in this guide are based on what
has worked for me when creating UV maps within ZBrush. All the best,
However, it is not set in stone and you can approach the Pablo Munoz G.
process of UV mapping and various different ways and in
many other applications.
Different applications handle UV mapping differently, so in

order to avoid frustration is important to remember that
this is a guide about the UV Master, a very specific ZBrush
plugin and not the process of UV mapping in general.
I encourage you to take from this guide whatever workflow,

tip or trick you think would work for you, but continue to test
things to further refine your own process.
Final thoughts
I hope this guide has been helpful and I appreciate you
taking the time to go through it. I have set up a web page
specifically for this guide, so If you have questions or
feedback about anything in this tutorial, you can post it in
there. The comments section work like a forum, so you can
add links, tag people, attach images, etc.
Here is the link:
www.ZBrushGuides.com/Mastering-the-UV-Master/
For more tutorials on other ZBrush related topics, visit:
www.ZBrushGuides.com
On sharing: If you enjoyed this tutorial feel free to share it. I
just ask to please share, either the direct link to the download
page: www.ZBrushGuides.com/Mastering-the-UV-Master/
or the Selz store link, where people can download it. Not the
PDF itself.

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A GUIDE TO: MASTERING THE UV MASTER By Pablo Muñoz Gómez

Contents Testing head Posed quick unwrap

Other UV Master features 19

Quick and easy 7

Set resolution for UV map 7

Workflow summary graph 22

Mastering the UV Master 10

100% Automatic process 10

easily, avoidable mistakes.

I created this guide to give you a broader understanding

I hope that by explaining some key concepts and showing

Who is this for and what to expect

I structured this guide for someone relatively new to UV

I’ll attempt to clarify some key concepts and common

What UV Master is and what is not

I have to say, that I enjoy the challenge of figuring out how to

I don’t have to leave ZBrush

I really don’t mind using various software to produce a single

Aside from the obvious cases where you have heaps of

This is, simply put, the process of arranging the UV shells, in

This is the process of creating a map for the 3D object. In

But there is a lot of space that is wasted. A “better packing”

UV islands or shells (sometimes

If you accept my simplistic definition of what a texel is, then

Quick and easy Checking UVs with texture

To check if the generated UVs are ok, we can add a quick

Set resolution for UV map

Let’s begin by setting the size of out

Unwrapping the model

Dock the ZPlugin palette to the right or left tray of your

UV Masters is great but be nice

High poly count

UV Master allows you to unwrap models with a lot of

This is the a new UV map resulting from the same one-click

I rarely create UVs on a very dense mesh. If I have a lot of

Bridges, tunnels and holes

UV Master has a slightly harder

head to a real time engine

Testing_head_Posed quick unwrap

Alright, from the little warm up

Load the Testing_head_original.ztl, drag it into the canvas

They are complex forms with a bunch of polygons arranged

With that in mind, let’s check the seams. There is a button

Let’s enable the Symmetry (within the UV Master sub- Density

From the texture map thumbnail, click on import and

Cool! This is getting somewhere… BUT I

So you’ll have a green and blue polypaint on your model that

Go ahead and enable the switch in the UV Master sub-palette

Make sure to click unwrap again to tell UV Master to process

The UV Master will automatically “convert” our standard

The reason I said it is misunderstood, is because this is not

So what is this then?

In other words, we can only paint areas in our model to

Let me bring back the

See how much wasted

So, let’s go ahead and manually assign the seams exactly

Logically, the easiest way to determine these different what we got:

or the Zmodeler with the polygroup action.

Definitely much better. Multiple UV shells are easily to

UV border value (distance between islands)

There is a setting in the UV map sub-palette called UV border

We could apply the same principle but scale up the most

Great! We are near the end of the practical part of this