Auto Unwrap

Smart UV unwrapping for real production. One click reads the model, decides where it has to be cut, lays every piece out flat with as little pull as the shape allows, and packs the result.

Requirements

Blender 4.2 or newer. Windows and Linux. Everything needed is inside the add-on, including the part segmentation, so there is nothing else to buy or install.

Install

Edit > Preferences > Add-ons > Install, pick the zip, tick it on. The panel lives in the 3D viewport sidebar, press N and open the Auto Unwrap tab.

The four buttons

Unwrap (Organic) reads the model, cuts it where it has to be cut, and opens every piece. Cuts run along hidden areas and the symmetry line where it can. Best for characters, creatures, sculpts, organic props, and meshes that came out of an image to 3D generator.

Smart UV (Hardsurface) is a fast projector for busy hard surface models, one part at a time. It cuts along the model's own lines, keeps mirrored parts together and lets them share texture. Best for guns, vehicles, machinery and kitbash.

Garment Seams is for clean quad garments, for example a Marvelous Designer or CLO export after retopology. It cuts them the way a garment artist does: rings round the cuffs, armholes, neck and bands, a straight line under the arm and down the side, a center line through the crotch on trousers, a waist ring on a dress. The rules were learned from about forty artist cut garments.

Preview Seams shows where the cuts would run before anything is unwrapped, so you can look them over first.

The panels

Parts decides how the model is split before it is cut. A seam never crosses from one part into the next, so parts give the cutting borders it could not find on its own. Show Parts paints them on the model. Pick and Merge joins two neighbours, Merge Selected joins everything selected, Split turns the selected faces into a part of their own. At 1 the whole model is one piece and the engine picks every seam itself. On figures a high count works well, on hard surface models eight to thirty is plenty.

Seams is the trade between cutting less and stretching less. Less Stretch cuts wherever it helps, Fewer Seams keeps the model whole and takes the pull, Balanced sits between them. Pick Islands On Model lets you click islands on the model itself and unwrap only those again, with a choice of engine for that piece. Redo Selected Island redoes one island and leaves every other island exactly where it is, at the same texel density and in the same tile.

Advanced carries Symmetry. On a symmetric model the parts, the seams and the finished UVs are mirrored.

Smart UV carries Optimize Layout. On it, the panels are straightened onto their own grid and the sheet is filled as tightly as the shapes allow. Off, whatever came out of the flattening is what gets packed, which is the right choice on a model the straightening misreads.

Packing carries Stack Repeats, which puts identical parts on one place on the sheet so the texture is spent once rather than a hundred times, and UDIM Tiles. Above one tile the parts are dealt out so every tile carries about the same surface. Object keeps each object whole on one tile, Balanced shares the islands out for even texel density.

Customize is the card's own colour and corner rounding. If you would rather have a plain Blender panel, there is a switch for that in the add-on preferences.

What happens at the end

Every run finishes with one last pass through Blender's own packer, across every selected object at once. It settles anything the build left sitting on top of something else, keeps every island in the UDIM tile it belongs to, and leaves the whole selection at one texel density. There is no need to go to UV and Pack Islands by hand afterwards.