UVLayout is doing an excellent job laying out the UVs according to island area proportions, I'm looking for a way to restrict the UVs from being rotated when being packed, however. Maya has an option under UV Layout -> rotation -> none, which does what I'm after. Is there way to achieve this in Houdini 15.5? I see the Axis-Align Islands option but can't figure out what it does and it is not mentioned in the help document - is there a way to establish an axis direction through an attribute create perhaps? Any thoughts would be much appreciated Thanks!

Axis align option will figure out island's best axis and will attempt to align that axis to coordinate axes. This option is there to mostly help packing of pieces that have rectangular shape.

I am not sure if there's a way to do what you want in UVLayout, but I may be wrong.

Same problem here, i was in a hurry, so i did use modo UV tool Pack Uvs (horizontal) on an exported obj, but i'd really like to be able to orient the UVs inside houdini

Ran into this just now, sent a RFE. Hope to figure something out soon so I can do more and more of my daily work in Houdini.

any solution to this? i am trying to uv flatten a couple of simple grids but they get rotated in uv space

Rotated UV islands are a problem when using smart materials in Substance Painter .

If your using a wood texture the rotated UV's are clearly visible.

I dont see how this issue has not been addressed.

sqwert_1
I dont see how this issue has not been addressed.

you can't expect old posts to be kept up to date to use them as a reliable source of current state of things

try UV Layout SOP
- Axis Alignment: None
- Island Rotation Step: No Rotation (default)

Does not seem to help much.

Drop a smart wood material on and the grain it still at all angles.
No idea what Im doing wrong.

Better, need to remove the sharp edge around the top