UV texturing learning resources

[user_deleted]

Hi All

I am looking for books and web resources which will teach me the fundamentals of UV texture painting. I have found much material on texturing in general but very little on UV specifically.

Any help would be appreciated

Mike Marcus

[failure]

Manual is good starting point. Read it.

[user_deleted]

Although slightly rude, I must admit that response was justified. It is my fault for not giving enough details.

I am not a Maya artist. In fact I am not a 3d artist at all. I am a 2d (shake) artist currently working in R&D and looking at straegies for texturing and lighting outside of the 3d invironment. Hence I do not own a manual for Maya or any other 3d software. I am looking for a primer which will discuss the basic methods and concepts behind UV texturing.

Enough information?

[failure]

If you have maya installed then you have the manual. Start maya and press f1.

And google for "uv mapping". There are plenty of resources around.

[user_deleted]

And tell me Failure, why would a 2d artist have Maya installed on his computer?

Meanwhile, can anyone suggest any other books or resources apart from Google which is kind of obvious?

[joojaa]

well just out of curiosity did you google? I mean 1 google and the answer is in my face on th first possible hit.

UVmapping ist just 2d cordinates bound to corners of vertices thats then interpolated to obtain the cordinate one the 2d map. Very easy to do in comp just render out the 2d cordinates and you get a lookup cordinate for the 2d image. Is rather straighfirward to implement.

However uv mapping in it self isnt this easy, because it involves designing the layout, but you shoulcnt concern yourself of that tough, as you said you have no interest in 3d but rether how it relates to 2d. THe problem is that most tutorials concern how to do it properly. Offcourcre all you need to know is the paragraph before last.

theres a good explanation of this in the www.dvgarage.com about accurately placing the highlight tute, should give you a hint. (altough they do one extra step wich is totaly not needed, you could just feed the actual uv cords instead)

[user_deleted]

Yes in fact, I extesively googled.

I see that maybe still, I wasnt very clear in my requirements. 2d artists gain large amounts of experience over the years in skills such as tracking and keying. They might wish to write a book on for instance tracking or at least containing a chapter or two on the subject. This book will contain more information than just "tracking is where a computer algorithm follows a high contrast edge from frame to frame", it will communicate tracking strategies and techniques. Give advice and describe the tracking workflow in detail and describe how an artist can utilise the technology to the fullest. One example of this would be the excelent tracking chapter in "art and science of digital compositing" by Ron Brinkman.

My question is, does a similar resource exist aboout UV mapping. Is there some resource which anyone can recomend which will transfer to me in-depth knowlege and practical experience on the day to day realities of UV mapping. Has anyone read a book (or web tutorial) which contains information which will give me an in depth understanding of what a UV texturing artist does every day?

Clear enough?

[joojaa]

Not that i know of, purely uv... no. There are different strategies. but because of the nature of things thereis no optimal way off doing uvmapping so whatever strategy somebody else uses might not suit you in different cricumstances.

Basicaly the idea is to get a s non disorting surface as possible. But still its nothing directly do with your question form a pure 2d point of vieww it does not matter all a 2d artist would need to know is that theres a uvmap maybe how its laid out if you need to paint one, but thats it. The 2d texturer has allmost no need to do the uvs himself.

You cant realy take uv mapping out of context, as theres no idea behind it if theres no 3d involved. because every new tropology has individual challenges to it.

It all comes down to how much resolution you can cram in. i mean if you use 8 k maps then theres realy no problem regarding wasted space, this will make for a less disorting map, but with more seams. However if the map is small like in a games modell you need to use the space as optimaly as possible, leaving dissortion into a much less importance.

Besides one can use a uvmap as a textureing tool if mutitexturing is allowed.

[joojaa]

Oh yeah uvmapping is actualy the worst described aspect of 3d but thats because once you grasp the basic idea and problem involved it suddenly hits you like lightning. So that the sentece:

uv mapping is just a guide on how to tranfer cordinates back and forth form a 3d shape to a 2d one is actualy all you need.

Its best to thinkof the surface like a piece of 3d cloth and how you should cut it up and bend to achhieve a flat planar representation of the surface.

Offcourse theres many techingues like quiltting, projecting , project stitching shrinkwrapping etc etc.

[user_deleted]

Thanks for your help Joojaa, I have noticed how hard it is to find information out there on UV mapping. Hence my post.

I am a little confused to the workflow. Is it possible to take a 2d image or photograph, say a globe of the world for instance, unwrap it using a peice of geometry (in this case a simple sphere), touch up the flat texture and then rewrap it back onto animated geometry (in this case a spinning sphere). Is this a usual workflow? I have heard that there is UV painting and mapping software out there. Is this the sort of thing that it does?

What would be an alternative workflow for UV texturing an object?

What if I wanted to take a set of photographic references of a person for instance and create a flat UV map from them in order to texture an animated CG figure? What are the steps involved in creating the texture?

Is there really no literature which could answer these and similar questions?

[failure]

Don't confuse uv mapping and texture creation/painting. Uv map defines how the texture image is "put" on the 3d geometry. It maps 2d image onto 3d object. This is done using u and v coordinates of vertices - each vertex has it's position in the 3d space, and it has it's position in the 2d texture space. You can see and edit vertex position in texture space in the uv editor.
But you don't really need texture image in order to define the mapping. By editing uv coordinates you just specify how the mapping operation will be carried out, not what will actually be mapped.

For example in quake 3 arena, Cadaver and Biker are same mesh with same uv layout but have different textures painted on them. 3d artist made the model and uv layout and then texture artist painted different texture image for each villan using same uv layout as a reference.

Usual workflow goes like this:

1. Ediu uv's, project, move, combine etc ( whatever your tool of choice has to offer ) until you get nice "uv layouts" ( nice means something that is good for painting ). This requires little bit of forward thinking.

2. Snapshot the uv layout and paint the actual texture over layout in paint program or directly on 3d geometry if your 3d tool has this ability.

Basic concept is really straghtforward and you can learn most of techinques from manual of the tool you'll be using for laying out the uv's. There is really no point in learning it if you don't have some kind of uv tool to immediately try out things.

For polygons there is no alterantive to uv mapping.

In my experience, editing uv's is at least as hard as doing the modeling. And you need to be creative and have decent problem solving abilities because there are no rules on how to do it properly.

[joojaa]

as for the world image you djust do a parametric conic and apply teh square image on that (the projection behaves like this).

And yes its possible to do maps forst and uves later ist jsut that its usualy easir to do the other way around.

[user_deleted]

So the texture painter does exactly the same job whether or not the texure is for UV or polygons? He paints onto the snapshot (presumably in high resolution) and then the texture is unwrapped to make it flat and rewrapped onto the geometry?

The next question has to be, are there any good books about texture painting?

[failure]

Download maya PLE, and try to make uv layout and texture paint for simple object, preferably by following one of the beginner level tutorials found around the web. It will give you some insight into the process.

[joojaa]

UV is not a geometry type its just a mapping that tells how the data itransfeered form 2d to 3d space. BUt your quwtion is a bit wonky. theres no uv texturing per se theres just texturing, its the same thing. Uv mapping is just te act of making the coversion rules a uv texture just refeers to teh fact that the texture uses uv space for its mapping.

And in general the sanpshot is made from the unwrapped polygon modell wich now lies in a 2d space wich is called the uv map of the texture.

The next question has to be, are there any good books about texture painting?

Anything that would deal with shading or using a paint application naturaly.

PS. there are lots of different tpes of mappings available indeef any conversion rule would be a mappping as would a rule that told a object to rpeat on a surface.

[walcottd]

I would look at Owen Demers's book: Digital Texturing and Painting. I worked with Owen back at ESC and think he's one of the most talented artists in that field.

His best advice: just paint. Paint a lot.

I'm a TD so he and I would speak different languages in terms of production and I still recommend his book to everyone in my classes because it made a lot of sense to me.

svjo