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Tutorial: Unwrapping Suzanne

Intro

In this tutorial we will demonstrate some of the new UV mapping tools in Blender 2.42. We'll do this by UV mapping Suzanne, Blender's built-in monkey. A basic knowledge of how UV mapping in Blender works is required.

We start by adding Suzanne, and remove the eyes because they are of no interest here. Hit F to enter UV/Faceselect Mode. Apply a checkermap texture. Before starting, make sure the following options are enabled in the UV Calculation panel:

• Unwrapper set to Angle Based: this is the new unwrapping method that we will use.
• Draw Edges: we want to see the edges when we are cutting seams.

Unwrapping

Select all faces, and type U > Unwrap. The result is already quite interesting: the eye was used as an outer boundary for unwrapping. Clearly we need to cut open the monkey's head.

The head can be cut open by marking seams. The easiest way to do this is to Alt RMB click an edge. Then ShiftAlt RMB click another edge, and a seam will be made from one edge to the other. We'll cut it open at the back of the head and add add another seam at the top of the head.

Select all faces again, type U > Unwrap. Now things look a lot better, except that ears get a very small part of the texture. Since they are very curved, it's best to cut them off and unwrap them separately.

Again the seams can be marked the same way. Another possibility is to select the ear and press Ctrl E > Mark Border Seams. The edges at the border of the selection will then be marked as seams. We also add a seam over the ear itself, so it can fold open.

Unwrapping again gives us the final result.