Source: Blender UVs and Principled BSDF

Source metadata

• Type: Official Blender documentation
• Maintainer: Blender documentation team
• Accessed: 2026-04-24
• Primary URLs:
  • Seams
  • Principled BSDF

Key takeaways

• Blender’s seam documentation explains UV seams as the cuts that let a 3D surface flatten into a UV layout.
• The seam workflow is iterative: mark seams, unwrap, adjust seams, repeat, then manually adjust UVs.
• Good seam placement reduces stretching while keeping visible seams under control.
• The Principled BSDF node is Blender’s central material node for many PBR-style surfaces.
• Base Color, Roughness, Metallic, Alpha and Normal map directly to beginner game-art concerns.

Notable claims

• Blender recommends using as few seams as possible while keeping stretching low.
• Roughness controls the spread of specular reflection, with low values producing sharper reflections and high values producing more diffuse reflections.
• Metallic separates non-metallic surface behaviour from metallic surface behaviour.

Relevance

This source informs:

• 3d-materials-and-uvs
• unity-3d-import-pipeline
• 3d-production-pipeline
• blender-overview

Open questions raised

• Should beginner students hand-mark seams first, or begin with Smart UV Project and then learn why it fails on more complex assets?
• Which texture-map set should GDnD standardise for first-year 3D props?

Links

• 3d-materials-and-uvs
• unity-3d-import-pipeline
• 3d-production-pipeline