UV Studio — Help & Documentation

UV Studio maps your artwork onto the screens in a venue or event model — LED walls, floors, pillars, ribbon boards — and sends the result straight back to Cinema 4D or Blender, or out as a GLB. This page walks through every tool with close-up screenshots.

Open UV Studio ↗ Download for Mac / Windows

Quick start

The entire workflow in four steps. Everything below goes deeper on each one.

Click the orb, import a .glb/.gltf together with its PSDs/images — or Send a selection from Cinema 4D / Blender.
Confirm which objects are screens in the import dialog, then link each screen to its artwork in the wizard.
Auto-map ALL to fit every screen to its content — adjust rotation/flip/projection per screen if needed.
Send back to Cinema 4D / Blender, or Export a textured GLB.

UV Studio launcher — The launcher — click the orb to begin.

1Bringing screens in

Two ways to get geometry into UV Studio.

A. Import a model

Pick a GLB/glTF, optionally with its PSDs/images selected in the same dialog. UV Studio auto-detects likely screens by name — screen, led, display, ribbon, board, jumbotron, video wall, monitor — and pre-checks them (green screen tag; textured means it already carries a texture). Unchecked objects still import, as dimmable reference geometry. Different naming convention? Add your own words right in the dialog's Auto-detect screens named like field — detection re-runs live as you type, and a Filter box searches busy scenes. Editing keywords never undoes a box you ticked by hand.

B. Send from Cinema 4D / Blender

Select your objects in the DCC and hit Send — they open here automatically over the bridge (see below). No manual export.

Choose screens dialog — The import dialog — checked objects become mappable screens; the rest arrive as dimmable reference geometry.

2Linking artwork to screens

The heart of the app: telling each screen which image or PSD layer plays on it.

Link media to screens wizard, expanded — Click a screen's row to expand a thumbnail list of every imported image and PSD layer.

Name matches link automatically. Click any row to change it — pick by look, not filename. "keep imported" leaves the screen on whatever it came in with. Links are one-to-one: picking a layer already used elsewhere moves it.

What the colored dots mean — a question people ask a lot.

The dot in front of a screen's name is its identity color, derived from the name. It stays consistent everywhere — panel, wizard, 3D outlines — so you can always match a row to an object.

A dot at the end of a media option means that layer is already linked to a different screen — the color tells you which (hover for the name). Picking it steals it.

The workspace

Three parts: a primary view, a secondary view, and the Screens panel on the right. The two views are the 2D map and the 3D venue — whichever you're not using as primary rides along as the secondary.

UV Studio workspace — 2D map primary, floating 3D view, screens panel — The 2D map is primary here (outlined screen slices + a pixel ruler), with the 3D view floating on top and the Screens panel on the right.

Swap, dock, float

The title bar of the secondary view has three small icons:

Swap (⇄) — flip which view is primary. The same as pressing Tab anywhere.
Dock (▐) — snap the floating view into a side-by-side split with a draggable divider (below). Great for watching the 3D result while you nudge UVs in 2D.
Float (◳) — pop the secondary view back out as a movable, resizable window you can drag anywhere over the primary view. This is the default.

Docked split view — 3D on the left, 2D map on the right, draggable divider between — Docked: the two views sit side by side. Drag the divider to resize; the swap icon still flips which side is which, and the float icon pops it back out.

3D venue with mapped screens promoted to the main pane — Swapped so the 3D venue is primary (via `Tab` or the swap icon) with the 2D map floating.

3D view modes

Three ways to look at the mapped venue — press 1 / 2 / 3 over the 3D view, or click the toolbar.

Checker mode — a UV-space checker pattern reveals stretching — **Checker** — a grid pattern in UV space. Even squares = clean unwrap; stretched or skewed squares show where the projection is distorting.

Distortion feedback mode — color-coded stretch map — **Distortion** feedback — a color-coded stretch map over the wireframe, for a faster read on problem areas than checker alone.

Shaded (the default, 1) shows the real linked content — see the workspace/venue screenshots above.

The Screens panel

Your screen list and control center, on the right.

A selected screen row: thumbnail, status, resolution, actions — A selected row: cropped-to-content thumbnail, identity dot, status, add/replace + visibility actions, and the RES override.

Element	What it does
Thumbnail	Cropped to exactly the slice of artwork this screen samples — not the whole PSD.
Status	Mapped once fitted, otherwise Not mapped / No image.
RES	Detected render resolution — overtype with the screen's real LED pixel size if they differ.
Actions	Add/replace image, and a visibility control that cycles visible → solo → hidden.

Reference geometry

Everything imported that isn't a screen — the room, trusses, décor — for spatial context.

Mapping & the transform bar

Imported screens keep their own UVs by default — mapping is opt-in and one click.

Auto-map ALL button, and the confirmation toast it produces — **Auto-map ALL** (top-left) fits every screen to its linked content — rows pulse green as they land, and a toast confirms the count.

Projection — Auto keeps the imported UVs; Planar, Cylindrical, and Spherical re-project for curved or wrapped screens (cylinders get an automatic seam split). On a narrow view the bar scrolls sideways instead of overflowing.

Free transform

Grab handles to scale, rotate, and move a screen's artwork directly — press T with a screen selected.

Send back / Export

The top-bar action button is source-aware — it changes label and behavior based on where the scene came from.

Export button — for a file-imported model — Imported from a **file** → **Export** a textured GLB + a JSON sidecar with each screen's render size.

Send back button — for a Cinema 4D / Blender sourced scene — Sent from **Cinema 4D / Blender** → **Send back**. Only UV coordinates travel — geometry and materials are never touched.

Notifications

UV Studio talks to you through toasts in the bottom-right.

Three toast kinds: success, warning, error — Success fades on its own; warnings and errors linger (and pause on hover) so a partial send failure never slips by.

Cinema 4D bridge

Zero-config — both ends share a folder automatically.

Preferences — Cinema 4D section: link folder and plugin install — Preferences ▸ Cinema 4D.

Preferences ▸ Cinema 4D ▸ Install, then restart Cinema 4D.
In C4D: Extensions ▸ UV Studio Bridge ▸ Send, with your objects selected.
Map in UV Studio, then Send back — UVs land on the original UVW tags, losslessly.

Blender bridge

Same protocol, same zero-config folder.

Preferences — Blender section: add-on install — Preferences ▸ Blender.

Preferences ▸ Blender ▸ Install, then enable the add-on once in Blender ▸ Preferences ▸ Add-ons.
In Blender: View3D ▸ Sidebar (N) ▸ UV Studio ▸ Send, with your meshes selected.
Map, then Send back — UVs land on each object's active UV layer.

Keyboard shortcuts

Key	Action
`Tab`	Swap the 2D / 3D views
`1` `2` `3`	Over 3D: Shaded / Distortion / Checker
`B`	Toggle backface culling (3D)
`1` `2` `3` `4`	In 2D: Vertex / Edge / Face / Object edit mode
` `0`	Leave edit mode
`M`	Auto-map the active screen
`T`	Free transform (`⇧` non-uniform · `⌥` from corner)
`R` `⇧R`	Rotate CW / CCW
`F` `⇧F`	Flip horizontal / vertical
`S`	Interactive scale — move the mouse, click to set
`+` `−`	Scale up / down
`X`	Reset orientation
`⌘/Ctrl` `Z`	Undo (`⇧` to redo)
Right-drag	Pan the view · `Esc` clears selection
`H`	Toggle in-app Help

FAQ

A screen imported but shows "No image.": It has no linked media yet. Select it and use Add image, drop a file on the 2D view, or re-open the link step.
Auto-map said "0 mapped.": There was nothing to fit — link artwork to the screens first, then Auto-map.
My LED wall is a different pixel size than detected.: Overtype the RES field on that screen with the true size; export/send carries it through.
Does anything change my geometry?: No. Round-trips send back UVs only — geometry and materials are never touched.
The whole room came in, not just the screens.: That's intended — unchecked objects arrive as dimmable reference geometry. Dim or hide them from the panel's Reference section.