IMAGE MAPPING with focus on UV MAPS

UV Mapping is a form of Image Mapping. The other kind of Image Mapping is called Projection. One benefit of Image Mapping is that it takes less time to render than procedural textures.

Personally I find working with UV Maps counterintuitive, so whenever Projection is workable I’d rather use that. Projection is like lighting an image onto a projector screen that could be lit up with the image from behind it or from in front of it.

Projection has worked really well for texturing the simple architectural modeling I’ve done. UV Maps are meant to be used for complicated organic shapes.

UV Maps are used by moving points around, to manipulate the image that is applied either spherically, cylindrical, or planar. The easiest way to get one’s feet wet in using UV Maps is to use a simple object, but have it broken up so the object has enough points for manipulating the UV Map. This way of getting one’s feet wet can be accomplished by following the tutorial at www.tonyg.info/tutorials/LW6/Texturing/UV_Basics.htm

I will sum up what I learned from that tutorial with images and a little explanation.

Create a box with segments

Make the top view into a UV Texture view and from the arrow right next to the one for the Perspective View on the Perspective view box, select Texture.

Go to New UV Map (in the side bar when Maps is selected (instead of Display, Create, Modify, etc.) Type in a name suited for the type of texture you’ll use.

Now name the surface area on your box, use surface editor to apply a texture…

When moving points, the best analogy I can think of to describe the reaction is that in the texture view the points are eyes, and in the perspective view, the points are like mouths that speak in images instead of sound.

For each eye there is a corresponding mouth that tells what the eye sees.

Moving, rotating, sizing, and stretching groups of points and moving an individual point around will teach the reaction in a less complicated shape.

Now it’s time to try something a little harder, another step for practicing that isn’t too much of a leap. I’ll UV this frog tattoo texture,

on a surface I named on a Lightwave hand that does not include the palm of the hand, since I know I don’t want the frog there, and adding points to the UV Map that won’t involve the frog will just make the Map more confusing to use. This takes enough practice as it is so there is no need to complicate the practice.

Even for non organic shapes being able to manipulate position of the texture can be nice when one wants shapes in the texture to correspond with another object. Stretching and then resizing a world map lead to a look more like a pot… although a seam appeared when before the resizing there was none.