Design Nomenclature / Digital Model Making
UV Seam
Also called seam, texture seam, UV border
A cut in the UV mapping where the surface is torn open to lie flat. Every seam is a duplication: the vertices along it exist twice in the layout, tangents and normals split there, and no filter can blend across the gap. Put them where neither the eye nor the silhouette goes.
In practice
In an engine a UV seam raises vertex count — the practical argument for fewer, longer seams. Distinct from a modeled seam in the form, or a shading seam.
Not to be confused with
- Edge SeamA seam in the model itself: a line where the surface is split so normals do not average across it, giving a hard shading break, or where two panels genuinely meet. It exists in the geometry and shows in the render — unlike a UV seam, which exists only in texture space.
- CreaseA per-edge or per-vertex weight telling a subdivision scheme to pull its limit surface back toward the control mesh, sharpening the result without adding geometry. Weights run 0 to 1, or count integer steps of infinite sharpness. Cheap and freely editable — and carried by almost no exporter.