Workflow for UV orientation How to I deal with unwrapped UVs orientation?


Delete the default Cube.
Add a Cylinder
Edit mode and edge select the Top and the Bottom and a single connecting edge.
Make them into seams
UV Unwrap (standard Unwrap mode)


The unwrapped UV now shows two circles above a row of quads. I can save this and open it in an image editor and paint over those areas and get the texture to align on the cylinder back in blender.

But, the pattern(just happens to be text) that was inserted in place of the row of quads is now upside down on the model. Any attempt to flip or align just makes things worse, from upside down to mirrored or the Top/Bottom not aligning.

So my real question is how could I have known that the quads represented an upside down view of the world?

Do other blender users export UVs and mark them with arrows and colours just to see how they align on a model before actually painting for real?

I tried selecting the edges in step 3 in different orders before making them into seams and it made no difference.

I also looked at the Normals but they appear to be only Inside/Outside not Up/Down.

Blender 2.70
You can make sure your UV's are rotated the way you expect by loading in a test texture before saving out the UV layout. 

Blender has some built in textures which you can load by going to Image> New Image in the header of the UV Image Editor while in Edit mode for the object you are unwrapping.

Choosing 'Color Grid' and pressing 'OK', will load in the test texture. 



From here you can edit the UV's in the Image Editor using the normal rotation, grab and scale shortcuts until the UV's are rotated the way you want.

Below, I selected the row of quads by hovering my cursor over them and pressing L to trigger 'Select Linked', then R to rotate the UV island.



You can remove the texture once the UV's are aligned correctly.