Trouble Using Zen UV's Reshape Island – Not Getting Expected Results

General
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1

Hello everyone,

First of all, greetings! I hope you’re all doing well.

I’m having a lot of trouble with my UV unwrapping process using Zen UV. My OBJ is a detailed shoe model, and the UV layout is quite complex (as seen in the first image).

I followed a YouTube tutorial — I believe it was made by someone here — to learn how to use the Zen Unwrap and Reshape Island tools. While it helped me understand the basics, I’m not getting the expected results when I try to apply them to my model.

In the second image, I selected a full edge loop from the lower part of the shoe — that worked fine.

But in the third and fourth images, I tried doing the same with a middle loop, hoping to straighten it or make it cleaner. Unfortunately, the result wasn’t good — it didn’t reshape properly.

Then I tried the next step from the tutorial: selecting multiple edge loops at once (shown in the fifth image). The result, shown in the sixth image, got very messy — even the sole of the shoe got distorted.

I also experimented with settings like using “Max” in the Start Position for Reshape Island, and even checked the OBJ geometry itself for issues. Still, I couldn’t fix it.

Maybe my model has some segment/line problems affecting the unwrap — I’m not sure. I’ve seen how powerful Zen UV can be, and I really want to make it work, but so far I haven’t had success.

Sorry if anything is unclear — I don’t speak English fluently, so I had to use a translator.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Link images:

OBS:
i1: Image 1
i2: Image 2
i3: Image 3
i4: Image 4
i5: Image 5
i6: Image 6
i7: Image 7

2

Hello.
First of all, your UV layout is not complicated, but rather very dense. This naturally makes working with the UVs less comfortable.
I can’t see the model right now, so I can’t say how accurate the results you’re getting are. But I can assume that the islands were separated based on the idea of cutting pieces of skin or fabric (depending on the type of footwear). If that’s the case, then it’s not correct. You’ll never get a good UV layout by trying to align such islands vertically or horizontally. Imagine trying to sew a shoe using only rectangular patterns.
If you want a good UV layout, you need to shape the islands to resemble actual fabric patterns. To do this, use the Relax operator. And for texturing, you’ll need to use a program like Substance Painter.

3

For example, here I was making a pair of pants and tried using ZENUV, but the result wasn’t very good. So I went in manually, selected the sides, and used the Quadrify option with the ‘Selection’ setting instead of ‘Island’. It was working fine up until I reached this part, and now it just won’t come out right no matter what I do. I wanted to make everything straight so that the entire UV image would match the object’s texturing properly.

ex1
ex1704×697 164 KB

4

Unfortunately, you can’t achieve what you want without overlapping the island himself. No tool can help you. I recommend that you first familiarize yourself with the basics of creating a UV Map and only then work on such complex objects.