Sunday, 29 November 2015

3DS Max Exercise - UV Mapping

UV Unwrap

Experimenting with the UV unwrap tool has been useful to provide a different method for texturing. Some complex shapes and any relying on an imported seamless texture will benefit from using this approach. Below is a simple low poly house made to test this on.




 The first issue became apparent when I tried to use the box projection tool. The chimney is a simple cylinder shape but is too complex for the box option to layout all the polygons correctly.


Having first tried the planar option on the vertical polygons, I noticed it result in the shape of the outer circle. This was useful for the top and bottom faces and hence I chose this option. After experimenting it seemed the most intuitive and effective solution for the vertical parts was the cylinder projection.


The process for the walls of the house was much simpler, simply requiring a planar projection for the flat, equal sized four polygons. It was made easier by the fact I could unwrap the roof as one square as it creates a flat projection.


After adding a simple tile texture made in Photoshop, this is the finished result shown in perspective view:


Good parts:
  • All parts except the chimney are represented by a simple rectangle shape on the uv making it easy to work with 
  • The chimney and the house were kept separate to easily apply different UV maps to the different shapes
  • Having the chimney as a different UV map means it can be larger to have more detail

Improvements:
  •  As can be seen on the chimney, grey marks can be shown where the seems are meeting. A seamless texture will likely improve this issue
  • The lack of a seamless texture is rather noticeable on the roof where the corners meet

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