topic Re: UV Unfold tool / optimize, etc not working? in Maya Forum

UV Unfold tool / optimize, etc not working?

Anonymous — Sat, 14 Jan 2017 15:08:40 GMT

Sometimes i have this problem uving my models and its driving me crazy. For some reason, when i am uving a model, i am in the uv editor and i use the unfold tool (the one located within the smooth, simetry and so on tools, not the one in the left polygon menu) it just wont work.

Its like if the shell is blocked in someway and i cant do unfold on it, optmize or watever. The shell is clearly messed up, so i want to unfold it, and it wont let me. Also the uv layout wont work either (and other things as i suspect). Then i go to another model, and everything works fine. Ideas? or is this just another glitch from maya 2017?

Re: UV Unfold tool / optimize, etc not working?

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 01:25:32 GMT

I have this exact same problem....did you ever figure it out?

Re: UV Unfold tool / optimize, etc not working?

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 02:37:30 GMT

No, i didnt. But i hope with the update 3 this get fixed in some way. I honestly didnt use the uv editor since then.

Re: UV Unfold tool / optimize, etc not working?

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 03:29:41 GMT

Took me hours but I figured out what the problem was in my case.

there was an overlap in one of the points, creating a triangle that got stuck within the polygons, UV seems to get confused when this happens and can't untangle with UV smooth.

What I did was delete or detach parts of the model until you can pinpoint where the problem might be, then go in there and figure out which point is overlapping and fix it. After this you the relaxing the tool worked fine. Just keep trail and error until the relax tool works again. You can also use the constraint to find it.

Best of lucks to you!

I'm using 2017 btw

Re: UV Unfold tool / optimize, etc not working?

rmf001 — Fri, 03 Mar 2017 18:29:02 GMT

yea, non-manifold geometry can cause these issues.. use mesh>cleanup and clean up lamina and non-manifold geo in two separate applications of that tool.

Re: UV Unfold tool / optimize, etc not working?

Anonymous — Fri, 03 Mar 2017 18:35:16 GMT

Erm.. in my case it is the EXACTLY same geometry that it worked perfectly fine, and 5 seconds later .. it wont lol. It was already a perfect cleaned mesh.. so, i dont think non manifold geometry is the only cause of the malcfunction..

Re: UV Unfold tool / optimize, etc not working?

rmf001 — Fri, 03 Mar 2017 19:12:13 GMT

have you deleted history? i've noticed sometimes that repeating these actions over and over again can get broken when the history is still in tact

Re: UV Unfold tool / optimize, etc not working?

Anonymous — Mon, 08 May 2017 09:46:07 GMT

Hi there!

This might be of use to some people as I've noticed this problem with the unfold tool. If your uv's dont respond to the unfold tool and you get a non-manifold warning it does not necessarily mean your geometry is non manifold. I was working on a model today and was positive the geometry was perfect. When I got this warning I did a cleanup just to be sure, no change. Went through the model vert by vert and sure enough it was fine. What I found works is if you roughly block out your uv's using, cut uv borders, selecting faces and roughly planar mapping everything then using the unfold uv tool works. Once I roughly blocked out everything the non manifold warning didn't appear and everything worked fine on the same mesh that was apparently non manifold five minutes earlier. So if your sure your geometry is good, block everything out and the unfold/optimise tool works great!

Re: UV Unfold tool / optimize, etc not working?

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Sep 2017 11:19:28 GMT

I had this issue and messed around. I pressed 'unpin all' under the polygons menu is UV editor and it began to work again.

Re: UV Unfold tool / optimize, etc not working?

sean.heasley — Fri, 08 Sep 2017 15:09:38 GMT

Hi all!

Great discussion going on and I'm glad to see many of you helping each other and even figuring out some issues!

Just to add another tip, one option is to use the cleanup tool to simply identify where there may be a manifold issue, ngon, etc.

This can be done by:

Launching 'Cleanup' under the 'Mesh' Tab
Once inside the Cleanup window you can toggle 'Select Matching Polygons' as well as 'Nonmanifold Geometry'
Then select 'Cleanup'
Now you should see highlighted vertices that are causing the issue.

Like I mentioned above this can also be done to find ngons, concave faces etc and allows you to manually find and tweak them how you see best!

I hope this helps and feel free to post again if you need more assistance or information!

If one or more of these posts helped answer your question, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

Kudos are greatly appreciated. Everyone likes a thumbs up!

Re: UV Unfold tool / optimize, etc not working?

Anonymous — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 10:54:32 GMT

I have found if you get manifold the uvs error message in Maya 2018 when using the unfold tool, you can export the mesh to an fbx then import the mesh into Maya 2016 and use the unfold tool there and it works fine. I think it's a bug with 2018.

Re: UV Unfold tool / optimize, etc not working?

avardanyanULVKB — Thu, 16 Jun 2022 18:18:06 GMT

Hello everyone,

Hope this helps some of you, i was having the same issue but the i found out that my plugin unfold wasn't turned on.

that fixed my issue. you need to load the unfold3D , save your preferences, close maya and reopen it.

Re: UV Unfold tool / optimize, etc not working?

SDudleyNCLNA — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 11:39:20 GMT

Thank you so much, this did the trick. It's been driving me up the wall.