This means a shared spatial vertex position can have different UV coordinates for each of its triangles, so adjacent triangles can be cut apart and positioned on different areas of the texture map. UV coordinates are optionally applied per face. If the model is symmetric, the artist might overlap opposite triangles to allow painting both sides simultaneously.

Often a UV map will be generated, and then the artist will adjust and optimize it to minimize seams and overlaps. When the scene is rendered, each triangle will map to the appropriate texture from the 'decal sheet'.Ī UV map can either be generated automatically by the software application, made manually by the artist, or some combination of both.

Once the model is unwrapped, the artist can paint a texture on each triangle individually, using the unwrapped mesh as a template. If the mesh is a UV sphere, for example, the modeller might transform it into an equirectangular projection. One way is for the 3D modeller to unfold the triangle mesh at the seams, automatically laying out the triangles on a flat page. When a model is created as a polygon mesh using a 3D modeller, UV coordinates (also known as texture coordinates) can be generated for each vertex in the mesh. With UV mapping, the checkers tile the two-dimensional UV space, and points on the sphere map to this space according to their latitude and longitude. On the left, without UV mapping, the sphere is carved out of three-dimensional checkers tiling Euclidean space. In the example to the right, a sphere is given a checkered texture in two ways. Application techniques Ī checkered sphere, without (left) and with (right) UV mapping (3D checkered or 2D checkered). The rendering computation uses the UV texture coordinates to determine how to paint the three-dimensional surface. UV texturing is an alternative to projection mapping (e.g., using any pair of the model's X, Y, Z coordinates or any transformation of the position) it only maps into a texture space rather than into the geometric space of the object. The UV mapping process involves assigning pixels in the image to surface mappings on the polygon, usually done by 'programmatically' copying a triangular piece of the image map and pasting it onto a triangle on the object. UV texturing permits polygons that make up a 3D object to be painted with color (and other surface attributes) from an ordinary image. The letters 'U' and 'V' denote the axes of the 2D texture because 'X', 'Y' and 'Z' are already used to denote the axes of the 3D object in model space. UV mapping is the 3D modelling process of projecting a 2D image to a 3D model's surface for texture mapping. The flattened cube net may then be textured to texture the cube. A representation of the UV mapping of a cube.

Uv layout similar details