Pixologic is proud to announce the release of UV Master. A plugin for ZBrush 3.2 Mac and ZBrush 3.5R3 WIN.

With UV Master , you can quickly create high quality and artist-friendly UV maps. It’s as simple as 1-2-3

1. Select your model’s lowest subdivision level.
2. Click UV Master’s Unwrap button.
3. Actually, there is no step 3. You’re done!

UV Master will unwrap your model’s UVs in a way that’s easily understood by the human eye and without texture distortion. It’s incredibly fast, with results so clean that you can paint on the unwrapped model in a 2D image editor of your choice. (This includes ZBrush’s 2.5D canvas.)

UV Master was also built with several innovative features to help control its automated UV creation. It can:

Use your model’s polygroups to create UV islands. In this way you can for example unwrap the face separately from the rest of the body. Or have different texture space for the inner and outer surfaces.

Use Control Painting to protect parts of the model from UV seams and attract them toward places where they’ll be out of sight. For example, a couple brush strokes can move the unwrap seams to a model’s back where they will be out of sight. This is ideal for normal maps, which are typically very sensitive to UV seams.

PixYou can also use Control Painting to change how the UVs make use of the available texture space. If your model’s face is where most of the detail needs to be, a single stroke with the paint brush can tell UV Master to give it more texture pixels.

UV Master can even combine any or all of these options, giving you remarkable control while saving hours of tedious work. UV Master will free you from the labor of creating UVs, giving you more time to release the Artist inside you and focus on your sculpting and texturing!

UV Master Feature List:

• Create high quality UV Unwrap in one click.
• Control of UV seam placement through control painting: seam Protect and seam Attract options.
• Specialized Ambient Occlusion algorithm to automatically create seam Attract painting, which you can then refine if desired.
• Density mode to paint areas in which UV space will be increased or decreased to give the most texture pixels where it really matters.
• Flatten mode to literally unwrap your model as a flat surface based on its UVs. You can then use TransPose or the ZBrush sculpting brushes to adjust your UVs.
• Check Seams mode to display the UV seams on your model so that you can identify potential problems before you begin painting.
• Use UV seams created in other packages, but remap for better use of the texture space and zero distortion.
• Unwrap by polygroups.
• Includes several checkerboard maps to visualize the results of the UV unwrap.
• Work On Clone feature instantly sets your model up for control painting without putting your existing sculpting or painting at risk.
• Copy UVs and Paste UVs to easily transfer UV mapping back to your original model, or even to another model with the same topology.
• Full documentation with tutorials.

What to know about UV Master:

• UV Master has been designed as a one-click UV Unwrap solution, with extra controls for if you wish to change or improve this first result.
• UV Master’s purpose is to create UVs quickly with a result that will suit the needs of 95% of artists.
• UV Master creates and manages the UV seams system automatically. You do not use it to try and draw specific UV seams.
• You can “drive” UV Master to attract or protect UV seam creation in parts of the model by painting large areas. The plugin has been designed to work with large painted areas rather than requiring you to focus on specific seam placement.
• UV Master is a UV creator plugin and not a full UV editor. However, it can make use of the seams from a full UV editor for those rare situations where precise seam placement is required while still giving the benefits of UV Master’s distortion-free unwrapping.

Full Story at Pixologic