That is the question isn’t it?  After you spend all this time making this wonderful 3D Model, you have to work in 2D space to create the UV’s.  Barbarism! you say?  But its true.  In today’s blog we’ll go into what UV’s are and why they are so important.

UV’s

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UV’s are 2D representations of vertices on your 3D Mesh.  It’s best to think of your 3D model as wearing a skin tight wrap, and in order to put a flat texture on a 3D wrap, you are going to have to make some cuts and flatten it out evenly. After you apply the texture to the 3D model, any wrinkles or overlaps on your UV’s will show up as distortions on your texture. Luckily you have some tools to help you in this process.  In the image above you can see the UV’s on the cylinder on the left, and the UV’s in the editor on the right.  3D in a 2D space.   Notice also how I’ve moved some of the UV’s and it hasn’t affected the shape of the cylinder. UV’s only affect the texture space on the model.  Great UV’s mean great textures.

UV Editor/Unwrap UV Modifier

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The UV Editor is your first tool for sorting out the unique problem presented by a 3D object in a 2D space. Your first step to a great texture is to apply a checked material to the model as you fix the UV’s.  This way you can get rid of the big distortions and make sure each shell (sections of uv meshes) is relative in size to the rest of the model. Next up you want to make sure there are no overlapping UV’s.  In the image above you can see the top set of UV’s has overlapping, and the checkered texture comes out garbled and stretched.  The lower set of UV’s removed the overlap by setting the top and bottom caps separately, and by having the vertical faces all laid out flat and uniform. UV’s are normally a longer process than actually creating your 3D Model so make sure you give yourself the time to do it correctly.

Pelting

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Like the hunters of old, pelting is a process by which you can take your mesh and flatten it out almost automatically, by selecting seams along your UV mesh.   If you had a 3D model of a bear, and you used a pelting tool, your UV’s  would looks like a bear rug after the process.  Seams are UV shell borders.  Pelting works by taking the seams you marked and unfolding the UV’s through a mathematical process. This images are from the pelting tool from Hydralab.  There are other pelting/UV unwrap programs out there to make your job easier.  Another great one is the Headus UV Layout.

 After all this, the good news is you get to paint canvas like a traditional artist and wrap it on a 3D Model, like the modern artist that you are.

-Juan

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