Aspect-aware matching
Every island snaps to the best-fitting trim zone by shape, size and orientation. Deterministic by default — same input, same result, every time.
Plugin for Autodesk 3ds Max
HotspotUV matches every UV island to the best-fitting trim zone by shape, size and orientation — in one click, fully undoable. Lock a consistent texel density across the whole asset and stop fighting your trim sheets.
Why HotspotUV
Trim-sheet and hotspot texturing is fast — when the islands actually line up with the trims. Manually selecting, moving, rotating and scaling UV islands one by one, hundreds of times per asset, turns a simple adjustment into hours of work. HotspotUV does the lining up for you: select your islands, pick target zones on the visual map, and hit one button. The tool picks the right trim for every island, rotates and fits it, and keeps everything as a single undo step.
Key features
Every island snaps to the best-fitting trim zone by shape, size and orientation. Deterministic by default — same input, same result, every time.
Click, Ctrl-click or drag-select target zones directly on the trim map, with a live target count and background-image texture preview.
Scale every island to one consistent texel density computed from its real 3D area. No more mixed resolutions across a panel.
Auto-orient skewed islands to the UV axis before matching, using minimum-area rectangle fitting — even sub-degree corrections.
Keep proportions perfectly uniform, or allow a controlled amount of stretch (0–100%) to fill the zone exactly as much as you want.
Optional random 180° rotation, mirror and pick among equal matches — seeded for repeatable results — to break up visible tiling.
Match zones by real-world size, tag zones into categories, and fine-tune per-zone inset and global padding.
The whole hotspot operation — every island — reverts with a single Ctrl+Z. Experiment freely.
Load .json trim layouts, generate zones from your existing UV islands or from a grid, with a searchable zone list.
The control panel
Great defaults out of the box — but every part is yours to tune. Here's the whole workflow — panel, menus and toolbars — in plain English.
How each island lands in its trim.
Rotate the island before it's matched.
Which trim an island wins.
Nudge and filter the match.
How big the island gets in the trim.
Break up visible tiling — repeatably.
Hands-on placement, one zone at a time.
Every zone can behave differently.
Load, save and reshape trim layouts.
.json layout, or save your sheet.Tools above the trim map.
Tools for the zone list.
Workflow
Open a .json trim sheet, generate zones from your UV islands, or build them from a grid — with your texture as a background preview.
Add an Unwrap_UVW modifier, switch to Polygon mode and select the faces of the islands you want to map.
Click or drag-select zones on the visual map — or leave the selection empty to target all enabled zones.
Every island snaps to its best-fitting trim, rotated and scaled. Don't like it? One Ctrl+Z and try different settings.
See it in action
Built for production
Texture large sets of modular assets with trim sheets and keep every UV layout clean, consistent and repeatable.
Born in MSFS scenery production, where hundreds of assets need fast, consistent UV mapping every day.
Reusable textures across big scenes without manual UV fiddling — spend less time fixing UVs, more time creating.
Pricing
$15
Lifetime license · 1 year of updates included
Billed in your local currency at checkout
Get HotspotUVSecure checkout · instant download
Recommended — the .mzp installer (in your download):
HotspotUV_v1.2.0.mzpPrefer not to click inside Max? Run the included install.bat, or copy the HotspotUV folder into %PROGRAMDATA%\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\ (all users) or %LOCALAPPDATA%\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\ (one user, no admin), then restart Max.
FAQ
HotspotUV supports 3ds Max 2024 and newer on Windows 64-bit. It uses Max's bundled Python 3 and PySide, so there is nothing extra to install.
No. HotspotUV works exclusively through the built-in Unwrap_UVW modifier — only your UV coordinates change, never the mesh itself.
Yes — the entire operation, across all mapped islands, is a single undo step. One Ctrl+Z brings everything back.
Layouts are saved as .json (with background image, per-zone inset and world-size data). You can also generate zones straight from your UV islands or from a grid.
By default it's fully deterministic — the same input always gives the same result, and islands round-trip back to their own trims. Randomized variation (rotation, mirroring, pick among equal matches) is opt-in and seeded, so even randomness is repeatable.
It's a lifetime license — the plugin is yours to keep forever — and the price includes one year of updates. After that year the plugin keeps working; you'd only renew if you want newer versions. One purchase, one user. Questions or issues — reach out and I'll help.
Release notes
Actively developed — every purchase includes a year of updates like these.