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What is UV Mapping?

If you’ve ever peeled an orange, you’ve seen a 3D object laid out flat. This is an apt demonstration of what UV mapping is. For many workflows, UV mapping and texturing is a fundamental step to creating a 3D model.

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3D model of a dragon after UV mapping is complete

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Understanding UV mapping.

UV mapping and texturing dictates how a model will appear. The process involves creating a map that assigns specific co-ordinates, known as UV co-ordinates, to every point on the model’s surface. These co-ordinates dictate how textures and images are applied to the model, ensuring that they wrap seamlessly and accurately around the model, bringing it to life with detailed visuals, realism or style.

How does UV mapping work?

UV mapping is an essential bridge between your 3D model and its visual allure. Picture the UV map like a canvas: we take the intricate curves and surfaces of your model and unfold them onto a 2D plane. When done cleanly, our map can be as precise as possible, assigning unique co-ordinates to each point on your model’s surface.

• Co-ordinate assignment: UV unwrapping, which can be done autonomously in some software’s or by hand, is the process of laying out the unfolded surface of your model on a 2D plane.

• Texture application: Once the UV map is created, textures or images are aligned and applied to the 2D representation of the model. When done right, the UV co-ordinates will dictate precisely how the textures wrap around the surface, ensuring seamless visuals as much as possible.

• Refinement: Fine-tuning is often necessary to ensure that seams are kept to a minimum and when necessary, seams are carefully placed where they can’t be seen or are less noticeable. It is possible to stretch, rotate and scale parts of the map to ensure proper resolution and scaling.

Types of UV map textures.

Here are five common UV mapping terms you may meet:

1. Automatic UV mapping.

As we mentioned before, some 3D software will automatically unwrap a 3D object for you. While this is a wonderful way to save time, many artists only use this as a starting point. It is often necessary to manually adjust the UV map to ensure best results and the easiest time creating and applying textures to the map.

2. Planar UV mapping.

This technique involves unwrapping a 3D plane along a single direction or axis, then projecting the model’s vertexes onto a flat plane. This method works best with objects that are flat, like walls, floors or simple geometric shapes.

3. Spherical UV mapping.

As its name suggests, spherical UV mapping is a technique for projecting a 3D model’s surface onto a sphere in a way that minimises distortion and preserves curvature. This method is effective for any rounded shape, such as globes, heads or planets.

4. User-defined UV mapping.

User-defined UV mapping refers to the process of manually assigning or creating customised texture co-ordinates for the vertexes of a 3D model. Artists and designers often choose to perform these tasks manually to ensure textures align perfectly, to avoid distortion and achieve precise results.

5. UV map texture effects.

When it comes to texturing a 3D model, one map is usually not enough. To achieve the best results, multiple special effects are usually needed. Here are some common texture maps artists use together to create the final textured model.

Diffuse map

The diffuse map gives your model its basic colour. This map is also used by your 3D software to shade reflected light when set up, which contributes to the overall realism of light in a scene.

Albedo map

These textures are like diffuse maps and are used instead of a diffuse map in some software. The main difference is that albedo maps show no shadow or glare. In this sense, the albedo map defines the base colour of an object under neutral lighting conditions.

Specular map

Specular map textures decide the intensity and location of specular lights. Specular highlights are the bright reflections that appear on surfaces when light sources directly reflect off them. So, these maps help control the strength, colour, roughness and smoothness of these surface highlights.

Ambient Occlusion (AO) map

Ambient Occlusion maps are special textures that simulate shadows on concave areas of a model. This is low-budget way to add realism to a 3D object without having to add more detail to its geometry.

Normal map

A normal map is an RGB image that is used to warp an image along three axis points, thus allowing a surface to appear to have depth and added realism without increasing the complexity of the object’s geometry.

applying UV map textures to a 3D model of a dragon using Adobe Substance 3D Painter
Image by Damien Guimoneau.

What can I do with UV mapping?

When using multiple UV maps together, you can create better and more realistic 3D models. This gives you more creative control as the artist to add intricate details to your scenes. You can create textures as simple and stylistic or as realistic as you want, whether it’s adding scratches, logos, dirt or reflections. UV mapping is a fundamental aspect of 3D modelling and texturing. Mastering UV mapping techniques will help you not only offer more creative freedom but will also make you more efficient and effective as well.

Create brilliant UV maps with Adobe Substance 3D Painter.

With Adobe Substance 3D Painter, you have the option to use automatic UV unwrapping when importing a 3D model. Painter will generate UV islands for you, allowing you to paint on 3D models even if they didn’t have existing UVs. Painter is a powerful, flexible solution that allows you to paint with parametric brushes, apply smart materials and create your own to create amazing textures for your models.
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Frequently Asked Questions

WHY IS IT CALLED UV MAPPING?

The term UV mapping originates from the co-ordinate system used to apply 2D textures onto 3D models. The letters U and V represent the two co-ordinates used to map textures. While in 3D space we use X, Y and Z, when dealing with textures, only two co-ordinates are needed. We refer to these axes as U and V.

HOW ARE UV MAPS STORED?

UV maps store co-ordinate data that associate specific vertexes of a 3D model with corresponding locations on a 2D texture. This data is stored in various formats depending on the software and file types used when exporting a 3D model. Mesh file formats like OBJ and FBX can store UV mapping information along with mesh geometry. Often, the textures themselves that are used in an UV map are stored simply as image files. While these image files have no co-ordinate information themselves, they are mapped onto 3D models using UV co-ordinates. The UV information is referenced when applying the textures.

HOW DO I GET RID OF UV MAPPING?

For most pipelines, UV mapping is an essential aspect of 3D modelling pipelines. However, as technology advances, our ability to automate difficult or cumbersome tasks is improving. With Adobe Substance 3D apps, we are always looking for ways to relieve the technical burdens placed on creators and allow you to focus on doing what you love most, while the software automates tasks in the background. So, while UV mapping is still needed to texture a 3D model, you may be able to avoid it entirely.
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3D model of a dragon after UV mapping is complete
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3D model of a dragon after UV mapping is complete
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