UV Set Confusion

[t_smith5]

Hi

Has something changed with an update or something...? I swear when I've used UV sets in Maya before, I could get it working no problem. I could have sworn that you selected your recquired UV island, loaded up the UV Set Editor, clicked on New, and then hit Update and it was sent to the new set...? Or you click on copy and it goes to a new set...? Whenever I do it now, nothing seems to happen. I'll click on the new UV set, but it doesn't appear to isolate/show what should be there. In other words, it doesn't hide everything else I didn't select/move and only show what I did. Everything is in the same place in each set.

It tends to do it if I go to UV Sets > Copy UVs to UV Set > Copy into New UV Set, but with the current pieces I'm working with at the moment, it isn't. 😕

[mspeer]

Hi!

"...whenever I've tried to delete them from the new set, they've been getting deleted completely. From both sets."

- For sure not. That's also not an action shown in any of your videos. If there are indeed 2 sets and you delete UVs from one set and then an other set is empty, then the other set did not have UVs before the delete action.

The new video is correct, but it seems there is still one part that's not clear.

Switching UV Sets for multiple objects at once only works when they have the same name.

At the end of your video you only can toggle between UV Sets by either selecting only the mask or one or more of the other objects.

If you select all objects, then only the UV Sets they have in common are shown, which in your case is only "UVChannel_1".

I still don't understand all the hassle about this and for me it looks as a poor workflow just to view UVs of specific objects, as this will create unnecessary empty UV Sets, but it will work.

Why do you not just use "normal" object selection to view the UVs of specific objects?

Quick Select Sets should be very well suited to easily toggle the selection for often used object groups and these sets can then also be used for other tools and tasks.

[mspeer]

Hi!

Why not simply select what you need from the beginning?

For me it does not make sense to select all objects and then reduce the shown output.

Because of this I think that something like Quick Select Sets would be better suited for this task.

[t_smith5]

Okay. I don't think I've used Selection Sets before, so I'll need to look into those.

Regarding the deletion from both sets, I guess the cause is that I'm selecting and deleting the shells rather than (selecting) from the Object list. I can't seem to select all the objects I don't want and then delete them, or pick the new UV set as it's only assigned to the mask.

What I'm struggling to understand is what you mean by Switching UV Sets for multiple objects at once only works when they have the same name. The sets are supposed to be the same name...? Surely that means UVs I might not necessarily want will be assigned to the same set...? Eg: uvSet1?

[mspeer]

Hi!

Maybe there is another problem of understanding how UV Sets work.
A UV Set is per object and only contains the UVs from one object. If you create a new UV Set while 10 objects are selected you create 10 UV Sets, one for each object.

Example objects: UV Sets

object1: uvset_a, uvset_b, uvset_c

object2: uvset_a, uvset_b, uvset_d

object3: uvset_a, uvset_b, uvset_e

If you select these 3 objects simultaneously in UV Editor then only the UV Sets uvset_a and uvset_b will be shown for global UV selection as these are the only names all objects have in common.

You still can set / switch the UV Set for every object individually by selecting them individually one by one, or when multiple objects are selected by using the menu UV Sets -> OBJECT_NAME -> UVSET_NAME

In contrast to UV Sets, Selection Sets are global sets that can contain everything, like objects, individual components, materials,...

[t_smith5]

Righto. Well, my understanding has certainly improved since I posted this thread. So thanks for trying to explain and consistently reply. 🙂 I guess I'll have to get into the habit of changing my workflow slightly when working with UVs in Maya, and try selecting one mesh/object at a time to be on the safe side. 👍

[mspeer]

Hi!

OK.

UV Sets in Maya are useful, if you want to use different UV maps for different textures/material channels with a single object, for example one UV Set for the color and a different UV Set for the reflections. UV Sets are not intended to manage viewing specific UVs of multiple selected objects, for this there are "better" tools.

Please mark every answer that solves your problem (or gives the correct answer) as solution, so others interested in this thread will get a better overview.