Greets and thanks everyone.
I work mostly with Blender, I have Wings3D for testing purposes though. I\'m often asked about UV mapping. Don\'t let the strange name distract you, UV mapping is simply flattening the 3d model into 2d plane (image).
This image shows the idea
- Image key -
A cube is perfect mesh for uv testing.
0. First there is the 3d mesh
1. If you unwrap it in your head, it should look like this. It\'s a basic, yet functional UV map. (most 3d programs have automated unwrap for this. In Blender it\'s the LSCM uwrap)
2. In the UV map, faces don\'t have to be joined like they are in the model. In addition, they can overlap each other in any way. Placing all the faces in pile will result similar texture in all the faces.
3.This is where it gets messy. UV faces are also not limited to same size or shape as the faces in 3d model (the number of corners can\'t be changed though). If a face and it\'s UV counterpart differ in shape, the texture will become stretched. (try fitting the blue face to the cube without stretching it!) This is what you generally want to avoid. So in the beginning, try to make your faces and UV faces match in shape.
Here is what I did with the sword:
Not much to say about it. Just cut in half and placed few similar pieces on top of each other.
UV-mapping tutorials for Blender:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/UV_Map_Basicshttp://biorust.com/index.php?page=tutorial_detail&tutid=85http://download.blender.org/documentation/oldsite/oldsite.blender3d.org/20_Blender%20tutorial%20UV%20Mapping.htmlSection 2 in this hat tutorial:
http://www.ps-mc.com/tutorials/vr_hat/index.htmlAfter the UV mapping is done, the rest is plain drawing and image manipulation.
