U V mapping and unwrapping is the process of skinning
your three D object onto a two D surface.
For texture
if you want your image textures to properly project onto your mesh.
This process is very important
but what does a UV map actually look like? What does it do?
Well let's go ahead and show you
simply select your object and go into edit mode.
Select your entire mesh by pressing a
then go to your image editor and change it to the UV editor in the top left hand corner.
This is basically the same thing as your image editor but will display
your selections current UV map over any image you choose for reference.
It's also got a few extra settings specifically for UV editing.
Alternatively you can also go to the UV editing
workspace which will bring you to the UV editor automatically
as you can see our default cube already comes
unwrapped as do most of our primitive meshes.
This is the UV map of our cube.
So instead of explaining it to you,
I'm going to demonstrate how UV mapping works with an image texture.
All I'm gonna do is navigate to a file in my file
browser and drag it to my shader editor as an image texture node
you can see that are UV editor automatically displays the image
from our image texture note we have selected in the shader editor
but then why is our cube still white?
Well, to actually apply this image to our shader,
simply click and drag the color output
into the base color input of our shader node.
If your texture isn't showing up,
make sure you're in luck DEV or rendered mode in the view port.
To understand you? Ve let's go into the UV editor and select some faces.
You can choose a selection mode in the UV editor,
just like you can in edit mode in the view port
this will allow you to edit the movies like you would a mesh G. S and R.
Hockey's also work the same as usual.
However, we also have some extra tools in the toolbar
to transform without hockey's simply select the transform tool.
As you drag things around in the UV editor,
you'll notice our images distorting a little bit on the cube.
For example we can see that this square here
is correlated with this square on the cube.
If we simply move it around a bit
we can also scale everything up to repeat the texture across the mesh.
It's important to note that by default the UV editor
will only show the vertex is edges and faces.
You have selected in the three D view port.
This also helps make it clear which face in
the three D view port correlates to which face.
In the UV editor
for example we can go into face select mode and the view port and select the face
that will isolate the corresponding UV face in the UV editor.
However,
you can also flip dysfunction and have the UV editor
dr what face you have selected in the view port
to do that.
Simply click this opposing arrows icon on the very top left of the UV editor.
Keep in mind if you don't see all the buttons here,
you can expand the UV editor or scroll along the top bar
with this mode toggled we can now go into face select mode in the UV editor and select
faces in our UV map which will then select
only the corresponding face in the view port,
which function you want to use is up to you.
I typically work with the default function as it keeps my UV editor queen.
Now that we understand the UV editor and have an image projected onto our cube.
Let's go and take a look at the different unwrapping algorithms we can use.
Unwrapping refers to the process of taking a three D mesh,
unraveling its faces and laying them out on a two d surface
to begin unwrapping
simply go up here to the U. V. Menu or press you
even though our cuba is already unwrapped.
These are different unwrapped algorithms that we can use.
Unwrap is your standard unwrapped algorithm.
This simply takes into account what seems you have marked,
which we'll get into in a little bit and unwraps your mesh accordingly.
Smart UV project is one of my favorites
and it's great for unwrapping things quickly and roughly
like map and follow active quads are similar but have their own algorithms
cube cylinder and sphere projection.
Our algorithms most fitted for objects similar in shape to the name of the algorithm
project from view is a very powerful tool that essentially takes what you
see in the view port and flattens it as your UV map.
This is a very basic way of unwrapping your mesh and will not
hold up from different perspectives but can be used selectively to great effect.
Project from view bounds simply stretches the resulting UV across the UV editor.
I'm going to demonstrate this one real quick.
So let's go ahead and select project from view.
As you can see the image projects pretty well on our cube from this perspective.
However, if we rotate our perspective,
you can see that the images now stretched across the
sides that are perpendicular to our view from before.
That's because as you can see in our UV editor
there are not enough pixels for those faces in the U. V map.
Now you may have noticed that we can't get the original mapping of our cube back
pressing the unwrap option doesn't seem to do
anything because our cube is already unwrapped.
So let's go over exactly how to use the basic unwrap function
to do this. We need to mark some seems
seems are the edge loops where you specify for
blender to cut open your mesh when skinning it
simply select the edge loops you wish to mark or clear before clicking each option.
So let's go into edge select mode and select these three edges.
I'm going to do the same thing on the other side of the cube.
Then I can click Mark seem in our unwrapped menu
to mark these edges as where we want to cut open the mesh.
This will make them appear slightly redder.
Then I'm gonna go ahead and select this edge as well
and do the same thing.
Now I can select all of my mesh and go to the unwrapped menu and select unwrap
as you can see we have something more similar to what we had before
in case you don't understand why I chose the seams that I chose.
Let me walk you through my thought process
the arms of the cross we see in the U. V. Map are these faces here?
They needed to completely detach except for one connected edge.
So I marked seems on the three other edges of each of these faces.
Then we simply needed to separate the head of the cross from the tail of the cross.
That's what this scene was for.
As you work with your own meshes,
you'll get a feel for what seems to work best for you to get the UV map shape you want