Ok. I’m trying to get to learn the whole UV mapping thing. I’ve read instructions the the blender manual and followed it the best I could. But the thing with manuals is that they can’t answer you’re questions when you’re stuck. I’m sure the manual is pretty simple, but I get lost in it knowing only half of what it’s talking about. I tried getting the feel of it by playing around with it a bit, but there’s got to be a faster way to learn it. Could someone please tell me how to use UV mapping and editing? A follow through example would be nice. Thanks!
Also see the link in Modron’s sig and look at the thread “Everything about texturing, I need help”. It is a much discussed topic and if you search for “UVMapping” you’ll find loads of threads.
Thanks for the help Oto. I’ll look into Gimp and see if I can try out that tutorial fully.
I’d like to try using LSCM UV mapping, but Greybeard’s tutorial won’t play on my computer for some reason.
I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but by now I’m more in the mood to talk to people about UV mapping than following tutorials. Could someone please give me a step by step process on how to use LSCM UV mapping to me?
Please, could someone post with me one on one about this? Well, it doesn’t have to be one on one I guess, but I’m just getting lost in all these tutorials.
All right . . . it’s like this.
I know how to switch to face select mode, enter UV image editor, select the faces I want and load my desired image behind the faces in the editor.
(Man I probably sound so stupid!)–I like to make fun of myself. Ok. I don’t know where to go from there. I want to put my image on the surface of my model.
Let’s say I wanted to put a symbol on a snake’s head. How would I successfully do this using UV mapping?
There are 2 ways to designate UV coordinates to faces. 1) Go into Face Mode and RMB-select the faces in the 3Dwindow. In the UV Editor place them over the part of the image you want mapped to those faces.
2) Go into Face Mode (you may have to hit A to select all the faces) and with your Mouse Cursor in the 3Dwindow hit U. Then select the way you want to project the UV coords. Experiment with all of them except the Standard ones (you can just keep hitting U and selecting the next)
When you have the projection you want you can grab, scale or rotate any or all of the selected (yellow) UV’s in the editor to tweak where they will be on the image. When you leave face mode the projection is saved.
Um, It seems, Fligh, that what you just explained was what I already learned to do by experimentation. Where you left off in your explanation, I do not know where to go from. I still don’t have my symbol on the snake’s head. How do I do acheive this?
If you’re referring to Fligh%'s instructions on designating UV coordinates to faces, I was just saying that I had already found all that out by experimenting.
Um, guys. New problem.
When I hit Alt-Z to paste the UV image to the model in the 3d window–(Maybe that’s what you meant, hooligun)–the image was pasted over the whole model.
I selected only the faces I wanted the image to be pasted to. I ended up with the image where I wanted it, but also many more of the same images all around the model :o ! Also, all the images are surrounded by white.
Hence the whole model is textured white with the symbols all over it, like it’s wrapped in a baby’s blanket!!
Hmmm . . . In the UV editor, the symbol I want leaned against a white layout which I’m guessing came from the white layout in the paint program.
(Can’t get Gimp to work yet). 1) Is there a way to crop the image so I get only the symbol pasted. 2) what do I do to fix the baby blanket effect?
Unfortunately, this tutorial isn’t clear. In the tutorial you breezily state:
Now that we’ve the global shading work done, we can apply textures to our object, in this case, only three, a basic 256x256 tileable soil, brick and stone JPG’s that you’ll find easily on the WEB. Load it in the UV Editor and do F to enter Face Select mode and do a basic UV texture work…well, select opposite side faces (image above), in Side view, do U, and choose “From window” in the pop-up menu. Redo the same operation for the others side faces. To get the same texture porportions, select one opposite side face and allign the faces ( scale and move, red lines in the image above) in the UV window.
You show a very small picture of a brick-texture and just don’t slow-down to explain exactly how you proceed! “If the texture is really as small as it appears on the screen, how on earth are you making it cover all those wall-segments?”
The tutorial itself is splendid … especially when you show how to achieve fixed-lighting 1effects by painting on the wall. %| But it’s very hard to follow-along.
No, SelfStudent, you do not “sound so stupid!” It’s called feedback, and I assure you, you are not alone.
I vividly remember during undergraduate school that, on about the last week of the last class, a 4.0-GPA student asked a question that essentially revealed that, while she could “ace” one test after another, she really didn’t understand the big-picture at all. I remember across many years as a community-college instructor that students could smile and bobble their heads and even ask questions and you couldn’t tell where the gaps in their knowledge were! They “didn’t want to look dumb,” and of course that’s understandable but that also delayed their learning.
Plus, let’s face it … this subject is vast. We’ve all seen the Gods prowling around here – the ones who really do seem to know everything. :o But the rest of us… %| Well, we get along. And one way we all get along is by feeling stupid sometimes and asking stupid questions. But if you sit on the sidelines and don’t ask those stupid questions, you never do learn, and that’s really stupid. 8)
Go to the edit buttons (F9) and in edit mode turn on “Draw Edges” on the right. Tab out of edit mode and into Face Mode (F). Shft-RMB the faces you want to stick the symbol to. Tab into edit mode and in the “Link and Materials” tab in the buttons window click New then Assign. This assigns a new material to the selected faces.
Now go to the material buttons (F6) and delete that material (hit the X in the datablock) and add new one (not the right way but easiest to explain).
Open the UV Editor and load your image. In the 3D window Tab back into Face mode and hit Alt-Z then U and select “From window”. In the editor hit A or RMB to scale rotate and grab UV’s and arrange them to overlay only that part of the pic that you want to show on the model (looking in the 3D window to see if the faces are stretches. You can do the same in the 3D window to shape the faces to suit the shape of the symbol.
When you’re satisfied hit F again to leave face mode and go to the edit buttons and click “TexFace” in the Materials Tab.
Render.
I still get a bunch of little symbols all over the model when I just want it in one place.
Also, I think I’m looking for a neater way than how you described your process toward the end, about keeping the mesh only on the symbol and then fixing it in 3d. I tried my hand at it, but even when I do, it just isn’t as neat as I want it, and the whole model gets covered in white anyways, so I lose all the other textures I’ve fitted to my snake.
I’m wondering, can you combine regular texturing and UV mapping at all?
Anyway, back to the symbol. Is there a way I can crop the image so I get the symbol without the white background? Can you do that in Blender? I mean get a shape without a background color? The symbol would fit fine without having the reshape the mesh if I could just lose the white background.
Of course If I don’t even know what I’m saying, you’ll understand.
Mmm… me thinks you didn’t follow all the steps. A word of advice; try these things on a dummy model, the model you have has too many additions and deletes and just one overlooked setting can throw the whole thing off. The fact that you have the image on all faces means you have mapped it as an image texture mapped to UV (different from UVmapping). And the all white texture means you cancelled the texface option and you now have white as a VertexColor.
Anyhow. 1) You can get rid of the background by cropping the pic in a paint program. 2) If you make a seperate material for the symbol you can just add the image as a texture (not UVmapped), assuming you cropped it. If you do this you can use .png or .tga and make the background a seperate channel and transparent then choose “usealpha”, or make the background black and use “calcalpha”.
Well, it doesn’t have to be one on one I guess, but I’m just getting lost in all these tutorials. 
It’s called feedback, and I assure you, you are not alone.