Week 14: Project development – UV mapping

UV map

Once the model was ready I started to Uv map it. UV mapping helps you locate your image map precisely on your model. UV refers to coordinates that are independent of the XYZ axes. To work with UV maps, you need to be able to unfold and fold your 3D artwork, and also cut and sew parts together.

The approach I have used is the following:

For each part of the model I first applied a planar projection (Planar mapping projects UVs onto a mesh through a plane). When a model’s form is very organic, and you require a complete UV representation of that model for texture mapping, a planar projection can produce UVs that overlap and appear distorted. So I unfolded the UVs to make them usable.

Once I have planar projected the individual meshes before unfolding them I have used the cut tool. Cuts are an important part of the unfolding process because they allow the UV texture coordinates to freely unfold with as little distortion as possible. When unfolded, the UV mesh should lay flat without overlapping.

For the initial stage I have applied a checker texture to each mesh: the checker pattern shader is applied to the surface of your UV mesh and appears behind the grid in the UV Editor. You can toggle between a simple black and white shader to a color gradient in the Checker Map options. The color gradient makes it easy to locate tiles on your UV mesh.

For the bed head I actually planar projected the different faces according to which axes they were belonging to (x,y or z)

After I have arranged the UV layout of multiple selected objects simultaneously according to their material: so in this case I have separated the wood parts from the pillows, the mattress and the covers so that when I will texture them in substance painter I will texture them separately.

For the rectangle shapes of the bed heads I have edited the the cuts since the way I had initially cut them and stitched together were not ideal for the texturing stage: by placing the cut at the top (except for one edge), at the bottom of the geometry (except for one side) with just one cut on the side edges, all the cut are placed in areas where will not be seen according to the way the geometry is modelled which will leave any discontinuance hidden.

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