topic Re: UV Editor: Cannot move shells in Maya Forum

UV Editor: Cannot move shells

Anonymous — Wed, 12 Jun 2019 20:26:16 GMT

I'm UV mapping a piece of terrain in the UV editor. It is split up into multiple UV shells.

I must have hit a hotkey, because now I cannot move, rotate or scale the shells when I select them. The gizmo just moves their pivot.

Have tried selecting and reselecting the transform tools, closing and reopening the UV editor, but none of this is helping.

Thanks in advance for any help

Re: UV Editor: Cannot move shells

sean.heasley — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 15:07:18 GMT

Hi @Anonymous

It sounds like you enabled pivot editing. Try pressing the D key and see if this resets the tool back so you can move the shells.

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Re: UV Editor: Cannot move shells

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 15:11:01 GMT

Thanks for your response, but no this did not fix the solution.

I did not have the pivot tool selected in the main viewport and pressing D in the UV Editor has no effect.

Is there another different tool within the UV Editor that would do this?

Re: UV Editor: Cannot move shells

sean.heasley — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 17:18:26 GMT

Hi @Anonymous

If that didn't fix it then this may be due to the poly size of the landscape. There have been some similar issues reported with the UV editor not working properly when dealing with millions of polygons. Is your scene this high poly?

Re: UV Editor: Cannot move shells

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 18:37:12 GMT

The heaviest mesh I have in the scene is around 323k triangles, but the mesh that I am actually uv mapping is around 11k.

I don't think that the mesh scale or density is the problem, because I was able to go back to a previous save and continue UV mapping it.

I have also tried selecting verts, edges and UVs. They become highlighted but cannot be moved, rotated or scaled.

The mesh and its subobjects can be manipulated in the viewport, just not in the UV editor

Re: UV Editor: Cannot move shells

sean.heasley — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 18:52:14 GMT

Hi @Anonymous

Hmm ok. Your UV's might be pinned, try using Unpin All. in the UV Toolkit go to Pinning->Unpin All.

Re: UV Editor: Cannot move shells

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 19:16:43 GMT

Ughh, that was it. I never pin UVs.

Still no idea what key combination that I pressed, I couldn't find any that deal with pinning.

Thanks for your help

Re: UV Editor: Cannot move shells

lwvelazquez — Sun, 03 Jul 2022 01:07:44 GMT

I am having the same problem everytime i try to move them they distort. I unpinned everything like you told the gentleman previous to no avail.

Re: UV Editor: Cannot move shells

damaggio — Sun, 03 Jul 2022 01:12:26 GMT

please post some images of the issue, there's no problem moving the uvs here.

Re: UV Editor: Cannot move shells

lwvelazquez — Sun, 03 Jul 2022 01:20:12 GMT

posted

Re: UV Editor: Cannot move shells

damaggio — Sun, 03 Jul 2022 01:19:23 GMT

no image posted.

Re: UV Editor: Cannot move shells

lwvelazquez — Sun, 03 Jul 2022 01:26:09 GMT

Its there now was being finicky

Re: UV Editor: Cannot move shells

damaggio — Sun, 03 Jul 2022 01:29:22 GMT

Re: UV Editor: Cannot move shells

damaggio — Sun, 03 Jul 2022 01:30:53 GMT

Delete the history on your object and freeze transformations before starting UV work.

Re: UV Editor: Cannot move shells

lwvelazquez — Sun, 03 Jul 2022 01:35:42 GMT

Did all of that

Re: UV Editor: Cannot move shells

damaggio — Sun, 03 Jul 2022 02:11:29 GMT

Try changing the viewport to DirectX11, if that doesn't work you can zip the file here.

Re: UV Editor: Cannot move shells

bichdiep_luu — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 04:58:48 GMT

Hi I just had this same issue and figured out how to fix it just now. I don't know if it's your case but I noticed in my UV editor the Transform Constrain is set to Edge, so I switched it off and it can move normally now