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UVW Basics
UV mapping is a pre-production process which textures a 3D model by unwrapping or projecting the model's 3D surface onto a 2D image plane. While 3D models use the XYZ shorthand to describe it's position if three-dimensional space, UV coordinates use the UVW shorthand to describe it's position in texture space. In PIXERA the U and V of the UVW are what matter most for applying texture and video content to your 3D model.
How is a UV Map Created?
A UV map is created inside of a DCC (Digital Content Creation) tool such as Blender, Maya, 3ds Max, Cinema4D to name a few. The technique for unwrapping a 3D model onto a 2D texture coordinate system is a deep topic and highly dependent on the mesh in question and the DCC selected to perform the task of UV unwrapping.
For simple 3D unwraps common pre-set projections such as Front, Cubic, Spherical, Cylindrical can be used. For something more organic a customized unwrap will need to be performed by a 3D artist familiar with the workflow.
What is a 3D Object Comprised Of?
A polygon mesh is a collection of vertices, edges, and faces. All three combined are what define the shape of a polyhedral object in 3D computer graphics and solid modeling. Faces are commonly comprised of triangles (a triangular polygon), quadrilaterals (a four sided polygon), or other simple convex polygons.
2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygon_mesh
Dodecahedron UV Map Example
A Dodecahedron mesh is made out of vertices, edges, and faces. By unfolding/unwrapping the Dodecahedron a UV map comprised of texture coordinates is made and associated with the mesh data.
Below are images of the UV unwrap process as seen in Cinema4D. On the left of the image is the UV unwrap in texture coordinate space. The UV map itself are just texture coordinates and alone do not texture a 3D object.
Using the UV map coordinates a Color Map can be created in a DCC such as Photoshop, GIMP, Krita.
Combining the mesh data, the UV texture coordinates, and a Color Map you get a complete 3D object ready for import into PIXERA.
VW Bus UV Map Example
More complex geometry such as the VW Bus example can become much more complex with more 3D chops needed to edit and create. At a simple glance the below images show an untextured VW Bus mesh, it's accompanying Color Map, and the render of the Color Map applied to the Mesh.
Pixera 26.1 R 39 | 11. July 2024 | R.W. | TM