Can I disect an island in the UV editor?

[P4wood]

Hi.
I am an XSI newbie, having taken advantage of the 6.5 trial which is being promoted through CGTalk's "Alien Interaction" challenge, and I have been really enjoying the opportunity to become accustomed to this great software. XSI seems to cover all areas of CG production very well but, as a newbie, I sometimes find myself in a corner and in need of help. The following is such a case:

I have built and textured a model which I am using to learn some of the basics of texturing, weighting and animating in XSI. I used unique UVs and followed the tutorials to accomplish the task. Now I have started animating and weighting the model I have noticed that when I welded the edges back together some points under the right armpit have welded bak into a star, rather than their original configuration. I have deleted the errant edges and added correct ones but this has affected my UVs, as can be seen in the attached image. The area concerned is the blue band running around the model's right shoulder

What I would like to know is if there is a quick and painless method for disconnecting the UV islands that have become joined when I added the new geometry? I am reluctant to do the whole process of disconnecting, adjusting, healing and welding for the whole model again because that is going to take me quite a lot of time to get everything aligned to my maps.

Is there a way to do a disconnect without affecting the rest of my UV layout?

Thanks for any advice.

[jamal]

Hi Paul,

If I understand the problem correctly, you should be able to get ahold of the problem UVs by selecting the corresponding polygons in the viewport. You'll notice that the UVs are automatically selected in the UV editor.

Just make sure that Tearing mode is activated in the UV editor (Ctrl+T, or press the T button in the toolbar) and you'll be able to pull the selected UVs away from the main UV set.

Hope that helps,

J

[P4wood]

A perfect solution!
Thank you so much, Jamal.