Hi, when I use Zen Unwrap, two UV islands that were previously separated by a seam won’t merge—even after the seam is removed. However, if I use Blender’s default U → Unwrap (Angle Based), the two UV islands correctly merge once the seam is gone.
Is this a bug in Zen Unwrap?
Unfortunately, Zen Unwrap is a rather complex operator. And your question does not provide enough information for me to draw any conclusions. Please record a short video or send me the scene for review.
In the Zen Unwrap operator, you need to pay attention to the selection mode. In your example, you are using VERTEX. In this mode, only vertex smoothing is performed without changing the existing islands. You can read more about this in the documentation. To achieve what you want, you should use FACE mode.
I also recommend going through the tutorial for a better understanding of how Zen Unwrap works.
I’ve watched the full demo video, and everything worked perfectly there—following a clean, uninterrupted workflow. However, in real-world usage, we often need to make adjustments along the way. For example, I might not be satisfied with the initial seam layout, so I modify the seams afterward. But when I perform the same Zen Wrap operation after such changes, I get completely different (and unexpected) results compared to the demo—making it hard to understand the underlying logic.
Please review my previous message and refer to the documentation I provided a link to.
You used EDGE selection mode. In this mode, Zen Unwrap creates seams for all selected edges and unwraps the resulting islands. So the result you get is completely consistent with the logic of the operator.
If you want to unwrap along a seam that you have already created, you need to make sure that nothing is selected when you launch Zen Unwrap.
This operator is not just a replacement for the standard Unwrap. It is a complex operator, and you will not be able to work with it without studying the documentation.
I tried what you suggested, and it did achieve the desired result—thank you so much for your reply!
That said, it’s really hard to discover these details just by reading the documentation. There’s definitely a lot of complex logic under the hood. As someone who previously used Maya + RizomUV for UV unwrapping, I feel that a UV tool—especially one designed for speed and efficiency—shouldn’t require users to learn how each button behaves differently depending on whether they’re in vertex, edge, or face mode. The main goal is to unwrap UVs quickly and intuitively.
I’m just offering a suggestion that I believe could help simplify and clarify the workflow. Thanks again for your help—it really solved my issue!
This is a problem because I’ve already baked my textures, and I don’t want any changes to the existing UV layout.
Could you help me understand why the unselected UVs are being affected? Is this due to padding, packing, or some internal normalization in the unwrap process?
Thank you!
Hey.
Which version of Blender and Zen UV are you using? Also, please specify which packer is active when Zen Unwrap is running.
Hi, I’m not quite sure what you mean by “packer,” so let me clarify my workflow:
I select the object and go into Edit Mode.
I switch to Vertex selection mode.
I manually select the vertices belonging to two specific UV islands.
I run Zen Unwrap, and in the bottom-left options, I make sure “Selected” is chosen (not “All” or “Visible”).
However, even though I only selected part of the mesh, other UV islands that I didn’t touch still shift slightly in the UV Editor.
A packer is an operator or add-on used to pack islands in UV space. You can select a packer in the Pack tab of the Zen UV add-on. The packer affects the results of some operators, such as Zen Unwrap. But right now, it’s not about the packer.
Regarding the problem of unselected islands being affected.
It seems that this is a bug in the system for finding selected islands. With the transition to Blender 5.0, a lot has changed, and here we have incorrect behavior. This will be fixed in the next release.
Until then, I recommend using a different selection principle.
To select an island, you select all of its elements. At the moment, this causes a problem. At Zen UV, we assume that we mainly work with islands. If not, you must specify this in the operator. This means that to select an island, you only need to select at least one of its elements. The operator will then understand what to work with. Next, in the video, you will see how this works in practice.
It’s how you select islands.
This is how I recommend selecting islands.
Please note: Avoid selecting the border vertices of the island. Otherwise, the island adjacent to the selected vertices will also be changed.
Thank you for your feedback. It helps us make the add-on better.
Ah, my mistake—sorry about that! 
