ConformalUV — Gumroad Product Listing
Product Name
ConformalUV — True Conformal UV Unwrapping with UDIM for Blender
Price
Solo: $29 · Studio: $49 (site-wide license)
Thumbnail
nostromo-deep/topology/topo-conformal.svg on #070809 background. "CONFORMALUV" in spectral cyan (#2A8B9B).
Short Description (Gumroad summary field, 160 chars)
Conformal UV unwrapping via Boundary-First Flattening. True orthogonal grid lines. Yamabe distortion visualization. Auto-segmentation. UDIM auto-assignment.
Full Description
Why conformal matters
Standard UV unwrapping (LSCM, ABF++, SmartUV) minimizes distortion but doesn't guarantee orthogonality. ConformalUV uses Boundary-First Flattening — the algorithm from Sawhney and Crane's 2017 ACM Transactions on Graphics paper — to compute parameterizations where the Cauchy-Riemann equations hold exactly.
The result: UV grid lines that are perpendicular everywhere. Textures align with edge flow. Checker patterns stay square. Seams go where the mathematics says they should, not where a heuristic guessed.
The full workflow
ConformalUV isn't just an unwrap tool. It's a complete UV pipeline:
1. AutoIsland segmentation Before unwrapping, the mesh is auto-segmented into polygroup islands using four signals in combination: topology (connected components), curvature (Gaussian K discontinuities), normal discontinuity (face angle thresholds), and edge flow continuity. Mechanical meshes produce islands for each panel, fillet, and cylindrical run. Organic meshes produce islands that follow natural anatomical boundaries.
2. Boundary-First Flattening per island Each island gets its own conformal chart via BFF. The solver uses Cherrier boundary conditions (iterative refinement with convergence check) to handle high aspect ratio cases (10:1 rectangles converge in 5-7 iterations, simple cases in 1-2). The cotangent Laplacian is precomputed and cached — 150× faster than the naive build.
3. Yamabe distortion visualization After BFF, solve Δu = −K to quantify how much each vertex deviates from perfect conformality. Red = high distortion (place a seam here). Green = low distortion (no seam needed). The visualization makes the invisible geometry of your mesh visible — you see exactly where seams are mathematically optimal.
4. SeamSuggest The tool highlights optimal seam locations as zero-crossings of the Yamabe u field. These are the curves where adding a seam maximally reduces distortion. No more guessing — the math tells you where to cut.
5. UDIM auto-assignment Islands are auto-assigned to UDIM tiles (1001-1099) by surface area using bin-packing. Large islands get their own tile at high resolution. Small islands share tiles. Target texel density is configurable. The result: a production-ready UDIM layout without manual packing.
6. Conformal isoline preview Toggle the QuadFlow overlay (G key) to see where the UV grid maps onto your 3D surface. These isolines are the natural quad edge loops of the surface — perpendicular, evenly spaced, following curvature. Use them as retopology guides or verify that your edge flow matches the conformal structure.
Compared to the competition
| Feature | LSCM/ABF++ (free) | RizomUV ($150/yr) | Unwrella ($99) | ConformalUV ($29) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Angle preservation | Good | Good | Good | Exact (Cauchy-Riemann) |
| Distortion visualization | Basic | Good | Basic | Yamabe u field |
| Seam suggestion | None | Manual | Auto (heuristic) | Zero-crossings (mathematical) |
| Isoline preview | No | No | No | Yes |
| Auto-segmentation | No | Manual | Limited | Curvature + normal + topology |
| UDIM auto-assignment | No | Yes (best-in-class) | Yes | Area-based bin-packing |
| Packing | DCC-native | Best | Good | Area-based (RizomUV wins here) |
Honest positioning: For UV packing, RizomUV remains the gold standard. But for UV charting — computing the best parameterization in the first place — ConformalUV is mathematically superior at a fraction of the price. They're complementary. Many studios use ConformalUV for charting and RizomUV for packing.
What's under the hood
- BFF solver: 340 lines of vectorized NumPy/SciPy (cotangent Laplacian via COO sparse construction, Cholesky factorization reused across u/v solves for 2× speedup)
- Cherrier boundary conditions: iterative refinement with convergence check (max 10 iter, tol 1e-6)
- AutoIsland: four segmentation methods (topology/curvature/normal/combined)
- Yamabe solver: Δu = −K via sparse linear solve, handles closed meshes with graceful fallback
- UDIM bin-packer: largest-first area assignment, configurable texel density target
Requirements
- Blender 4.0+
- Python 3.10+ (ships with Blender)
- scipy (auto-installed or bundled)
- zforge-core (bundled)
Tags
blender, addon, uv-unwrapping, conformal, bff, udim, parameterization, retopology
File
conformaluv-v0.1.0.zip (~120 KB)
License
Solo: Personal/freelance use Studio: Site-wide (up to 25 seats)