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I have a bunch of mesh pieces that are next to each other with some faces facing the camera, and others facing away. I want to UV unwrap them in such a way that the front face UV pieces line up side by side without distorting the rest of the UV unwrap. Here's an example with cubes to easily show what I mean. The initial state: enter image description here

What I want them to look like: enter image description here

With something simple like a few cubes, its easy to do by hand. But I need a way to do this for many pieces, so hoping to find a way to speed up the process. (Note that its fine for the sides to overlap.)

An answer that doesn't require scripting would be preferable, but I can probably put together a script if anyone can point me in the direction of the right sort of API commands to use, or suggest what steps to take (I've done scripting in other areas, but am not familiar with the API in relation to UVs.)

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  • $\begingroup$ Hello :). Why not use Project from view? It looks like obvious solution, but perhaps not suitable here? $\endgroup$ – Jachym Michal Jun 1 at 9:28
  • $\begingroup$ It won't work because then the side of the object that are parallel to the camera will have 0 size UVs. And for more complex shapes, there can be issues with keeping UVs clean. $\endgroup$ – Ascalon Jun 1 at 19:08
  • $\begingroup$ What are the actual pieces? For many cubes, just unwrap, duplicate, move. Do that 8 times and you have 2^8 = 256 cubes. $\endgroup$ – Leander Jun 5 at 12:50
  • $\begingroup$ Its strands of mesh hair, which are a flattened cylinder. Their shape is not consistent. $\endgroup$ – Ascalon Jun 5 at 18:40
  • $\begingroup$ for this example a vertex snapping would work just fine but I guess you are working on more complex stuff? $\endgroup$ – Mobin Jun 5 at 21:37
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Using Snap to vertices in the UV editor is really the only option you have for aligning. Select the parts you want to move, and move the cursor over them until they snap to the side you want. This should work fine with more complex unwraps too.

I verified this by testing it out on a suzanne head here:

enter image description here

After:

enter image description here

This is about the closest you can get to actually aligning faces, other than eyeballing it.

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