How can I unwrap a curve into a striaght-line UV?

[Vulpinus]

I have a curved and beveled object in Blender, and I'm trying to get it to unwrap onto a UV in a straight line along an axis with no gaps. I know that will distort the texture a little (if not 'corrected' on the texture) but that's better for me in this instance than the alternatives. Is there a way to get Blender to do this (semi)autmoatically?

What I'm getting so far is shown below. What I need (if it's not already clear) is for the leftmost edge of the UV-mapped area to be straight along the V axis of the UV, likewise all the other vertical-ish lines, so everything maps to a rectangular area of the UV. Also, I need the gaps in the UV where the seams are to be eliminated by 'joining the dots'. I can do that, I guess, quite easily manually, provided everything is aligned along the axis already.At the end, each individual facet in the UV should be a rectangle, joined along its edges to the others, like a simple grid.

Removing the seams just gives an even more pronounced curve of course.

Manually realligning every segment is obviously rather cumbersome.



 

[Drongle McMahon]

Select one rectangular face; In the UV map editor, select each edge and align it vertically (WL) or horizontally (WI) as appropriate; Select all faces in 3D view; UV map with "Follow Active Quads" option (UF).

[Vulpinus]

That's great, thank you. It does just what I needed.