Hi williams.7489,
I really encourage you to watch some of the newer training about UV here on Cineversity.
https://www.cineversity.com/vidplaylist/hard_surface_model_uv_unwrapping/
Just to get a feel for it.
To place rocks on a surface with the Cloner, a selection is all you need. No UV whatsoever is required.
The UV(W) is the equivalent for textures, like XYZ. Since images are flat and have varying sizes, the UV space for images is normalized. This means the max image size goes from zero to one. If you change the texture size later on while the content is the same, you will see no change in position. When I learned this stuff 25 years ago, the 1,1 confused me first. (As in Germany, the “,“is used like a “.” here in the US) But at the moment, these are not seen as a single number. It is pretty clear how it is defined. (The letter W is for the 3D shaders, for more spatial stuff, textures are not really using it.)
A drill that I have done over a decade by now is discussed in post #9
https://www.cineversity.com/forums/viewthread/3551/#13850
I have done it with students, art-department-professors, senior graphic staff, etc. So far, after ten minutes of playing with it, it clicked most of the time. The key is to understand one single UV polygon and how UV points’ movement influences the result on the object’s surface. This (!) is crucial, and so far, you will search a long time to find that as a drill. But it works; it is easy and fast.
The Relax option needs a seam for volume-based surfaces. If that seam is not done so that the surface can be flattened easily, it might fail. The river as edge will fail, except for the river; anything else will be useless (distorted). The Relax function also uses the Flat project as a starting point while showing the model’s most critical part. In other words, the seam is on the backside then or around somewhere. There is no general suggestion other than think of peeling an object in a way that the surface has the least of distortion
BTW, for the water flow, create an object with the spline. Use Sweep here. In this way, the UV of that object follows the flow.
For the stones, please note that they have their axis in the center. I used the Mesh> Axis> Axis Center to place the Y-axis to -73%. They have all a different size, so they would be all half in the soil otherwise, or if lifted, some would be in the air.
This thread has become quite mixed and will be hard to follow, for people with one specific problem. I mention it, as I typically point, that each thread should have a leading question, and focus on that. We can finish this island in this mixed way now, but I have to try to keep it a little bit more organized in the future. Again, this is my fault, as I have answered to mixed questions here.
Here is your file back (new objects are on a green layer)
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/SH4CGCftDxRjwWaO8gIxrYknnu9mIZmbqW8bHfhR9Zv
My best wishes