I used to sculpt in clay as a hobby for a while, but the limited space and constant struggle to manage it have made it mentally challenging to continue and turn it into something more than just a hobby. For now, I’ve decided to put traditional sculpting on hold and focus on digital art, which takes up much less space. Over the years, I’ve revisited Blender on and off with long gaps in between, but this time, I’m committing to giving it a proper go, starting with the basics once again.
Before returning to texture painting, I wanted to share an update on the changes I made.
In hindsight, I’m glad the two-UV-map setup didn’t work out—it led me to discover UDIM tiles and the Texel Density Checker add-on.
I’ve always known I’m terrible at eyeballing. The moment I’m asked to eyeball something, my brain lights up like an emergency zone—rotating red beacons, warning signs popping up, the full internal alarm system screaming that I can’t guarantee accuracy or quality. But not knowing better tools existed, and not wanting to give up on Pothead, I tried it anyway. Spoiler (though you won’t see the evidence now)—the result would have been atrocious.
Using the Texel Density Checker, I assessed my initial guesswork. It was way off: some secondary or tertiary objects had triple the texel density of critical ones like the face, hands, or pot.
After watching Chunck’s lesson on UV packing in the Relic course, I liked the idea of using colorful checkers and manually rotating islands based on object orientation (skipped the pot due to already painted texture). This will later help with text alignment and fine details.
I’m now using two 4K UDIM tiles. All islands are at 64–65 px/cm texel density—even the tiny ones—and have a margin of 0.007. I chose to keep texel density consistent across the board since I don’t yet know which areas I might want to show close up. This way, everything has the same quality and flexibility.
Once I fixed the texel density and manually rotated the islands, I began packing. I assumed Blender’s packer would distribute islands across both UDIM tiles, but it only packs into the active one. So I split the islands visually into two sets. I activated tile one, selected and packed that set; then switched to tile two and did the same. It worked beautifully.
For packing, I used:
Margin Method: Add
Margin Value: 0.007
Scale: Off (to preserve texel density)
Rotate: Off (to keep my manual rotations)
I was initially worried I’d have to repaint the pot’s texture, but after adjusting the texel density, the pot’s islands didn’t change scale. To preserve their location, I pinned those islands and used Lock Pinned Islands during packing.
Lastly, from what I’ve gathered, UDIM tile seam margin (for baking/painting padding) and packing margin (space between UV islands) don’t need to match.
If I’ve misunderstood how anything works and it might lead to major fixes down the line, please let me know now. I’m already recovering from a prolonged toxic work environment that led me to resign from my day job to protect what’s left of my well-being. I wouldn’t want my first proper Blender project to crush me in the end. Technically, I’m still employed until the end of the month, but I’m using my accrued holiday days so I don’t have to be there for the full notice period.
Hi Guna,
Th Uv Islands look beautifully packed!
Although I am a bit worried about the bending of some of the UV's in the face area (forgive my Mouse drawing, I was too lazy to get my Pen&Tablet out):
Maybe it won't be a problem, the density is consistent after all, but here's an exagerated example of what might happen if some UV's are oriented different from their neighbors:
Thank you! And no worries about the mouse drawing—it’s more than sufficient. The texture won’t actually need to connect, since there’s a design gap between those two parts. The islands connect at the back, where the heater part covers them.
