An unwrapped cube with almost no seams, but a lot of distortion This can become a problem in more complex meshes so you need to practice and get smart with your seam placement. You can see the pattern doesn’t line up as it moves around the edges. The cube on the left has the UV seams highlighted in green. However the downside to this method of just splitting all your polygons apart is the number of seams it produces. If the chequer pattern isn’t stretched then you’ve avoided distortion in your unwrap. This is easy to tell by applying a basic chequered texture. In this image the way the cube has been unwrapped has caused no distortion to the polygons. Too much distortion will affect the way details are displayed on the final model. UV unwrapping is always a compromise of causing as little distortion to the wireframe as possible, while also keeping seams to a minimum.ĭistortion in terms of a UV map is how much the shape and size of the polygons have had to change to accommodate the flattening process. Seams are an unfortunate and unavoidable side effect of flattening any 3D geometry.Ī seam is a part of the mesh that had to be split to be able to convert the 3D mesh into a 2D UV map. Now that the basic concept of UV maps has been outlined we can dive into the more intermediate parts to UV unwrapping, namely seams. It can become quite a tedious process but it is essential to the 3D workflow.Įven if you don’t intend to texture a model, many modern real time engines such as Unreal Engine 4 or Unity need your assets to be UV unwrapped to perform some of its light baking. However a cube is a basic example and as the meshes get more complex so do the UV maps. If you’ve ever made a cube out of a cross of paper before, you have done the same process, only in reverse! An example of a basic UV unwrap of a cube in Autodesk 3DS Max

This may seem like a confusing idea at first, but it’s really very simple. This is where UV mapping comes in, as it is the process of translating your 3D mesh into 2D information so that a 2D texture can be wrapped around it. However there is no such thing as a 3D texture, as they’re always based on a 2D image. Now to give life to the mesh and make it look more realistic(or stylized) you want to add textures. Once the polygonal mesh has been created the next step is to “unwrap it” into a UV map.

The U and V refer to the horizontal and vertical axes of the 2D space, as X, Y and Z are already being used in the 3D space. The process of creating a UV map is called UV unwrapping. That means if you buy something we get a small commission at no extra cost to you( learn more)Ī UV map is the flat representation of the surface of a 3D model used to easily wrap textures. Tips 3D Written by Thomas Denham Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links.

Unwrap 3d model