Identify nasty UVs before painting almost all the object parts

[lookdev]

What do you do to discover issues with UVs before you start painting/applying materials?
Some complex models have several parts and the checker board in Houdini, although useful, is not as "loud" as a stretched material.
I've applied materials in Substance Painter to 4 out of 5 components of an object, and I,ve realised that the 5th had very nasty stretching. I went back to Houdini and it took a while to find the right UV island and to notice the stretching. It is there, but it wasn't as clear as it is in Substance painter after applying a material.
Now I've fixed the UVs but I need to re-export the fbx and redo the whole painting.
Do you have a stage where you apply something temporary only for the purposes of checking the UVs and what is that something?
(I'm new to substance painter, and this was my first model I painted in Substance painter)

[michael_11]

Now I've fixed the UVs but I need to re-export the fbx and redo the whole painting.

as long as you haven´t applied your painted stuff in the UV view, Painter´s UV reprojection should handle your brush strokes upon import of the fbx with the updated UVs (https://support.allegorithmic.com/documentation/spdoc/uv-reprojection-28737554.html) and the re-baked mesh maps.

I personally spend quite a bit of time checking and optimising my UVs. This also means doing test bakes and re-adjusting UVs, going back and forth. I am using 3dsMax default checkerboard, making sure, that I have an even distribution on my model. And if there is texture space left, I scale up the UVs for smaller parts.

You could use a more sophisticated UV checker texture instead, you will find plenty online

[lookdev]

You could use a more sophisticated UV checker texture instead, you will find plenty online

How are these called and where to find them? I'm new to substance painter, grateful if you could point in the right direction.
I'm actually interested in materials that reveal UV stretching, if there are any.

It's great I don't need to repaint, Substance Painter keeps everything, but I'd rather spend some time before painting than go back and forth to fix UV stretching.
Thanks

[michael_11]

I get your point about materials showing UV stretching in Painter. But since you won´t be adjusting the UVs in Painter, it won´t be of much help.

Both Maya and 3dsMax are showing you the amount of UV stretching/distortion as heatmaps
https://youtu.be/UFw6Rd7UVKI?t=439
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-ideas/uv-distortion-heatmap/idi-p/7916193

but like I wrote, it is as easy as using a simple checker texture and observing the amount of distortion on the model. If you try to avoid iterations (test bakes, test painting etc), you don´t do yourself a favour.

for UV checker textures, just do a google search: https://tinyurl.com/y8syr2dz