UV Area stretching, please help!

[Nougat Time]

Hey guys!
This is the metal plate on a little furniture piece I am working on, you typically use this on wood, by putting 2 screws through the hole.
While UV unwrapping it, I noticed this weird all red area-stretch as you can see, it occured on the loop bridge i made with loop tool.
Usually when I see this all red sort of stretch, I would look if the scale is applied, which it is, but the stretch also really concentrates on the loop bridge. (and it is 1 piece of mesh)

I tried pulling the area around, or scaling it up and down, but it remains the same red no matter what. In the image you can also see some other potential causes I ruled out. 
Have you guys seen something like this? Quite new to me, unless I am missing something. (the 3 curved, red bars are the loops that go vertically) Your help, or any feedback is very much appreciated as always!

[Martin Bergwerf]

Hm, I don’t know…

it does seem to me, that the ‘holes’ have way more geometry in the UV Editor, than they should, if you know what I mean.

[Omar Domenech]

I think it’s not that the scale is not applied, but the difference in scales between the UV islands and their 3D counter parts. In the UV editor, try average the scales of the islands, and then maybe pack islands as well:

[Nougat Time]

I averaged the island scale and packed it too, it didn´t solve it…the stretching is also occuring within the same island.
I made the mesh again, this time disolving any edges that don´t contribute to the shape before I applied subsurf,
while the loop bridges aren´t completely red anymore, the stretching still occurs on the edge and at some corners..So what is causing this? there usualy is a gradient between the blue area and the stretched areas, never did it jump from perfect blue to completely red like this. (it does tend to appear where geometry is dense, but never did it jump from blue to red)

Would you take a look at it if i sent you the file somehow?

[Martin Bergwerf]

You can upload your .blend file to GoogleDrive, Dropbox, or so and post a link here, then we’ll have a look at what exactly is causing this.

[Martin Bergwerf]

But did you try to Unwrap again?

[Omar Domenech]

That is weird for sure, so yes, upload the files so we can take a look.

[Nougat Time]

Hope it works, here is the Link:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/x50lrcuglia3tsuehxy3z/Plate-with-UV-issues.blend?rlkey=pvdibhjezqe6rmwi2dk8hm0px&dl=0

the UV right now is tiny since I averaged and packed it with other things before.

[Nougat Time]

oh and yes i tried to unwrap again, and the whole scale, pack, recalc. normal, apply scale all that

[Martin Bergwerf]

Right,

I must admit, that I have never seen this before, but…

your model is really small and I think there are accuracy problems, when calculating the areas of the Faces.

I Scaled up your Model and Unwrapped again and those red Faces are now gone:

[Martin Bergwerf]

But you just leave it as is and ignore the Area Stretch Overlay, as you don’t see any stretching in the Texture

This is just to ‘explain’ why this happens.

[Nougat Time]

You´re right! I tried scaling it up a tad bit, and the red was gone too, thank you again for your time!

And thank you Omar too, don´t know what I would do without you two!

[Author]

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