I assume the answer is that it is a Must, however in Blender, when you add a texture to a model which you have chosen, maybe a high detailed or even a colour…Can that be it, or do you Have to have UV Mapping on it? I am designing a characer for a game. I am adding colour texture to it to give it a stylistic look and once completed…Why do I have to UV Map it?
I assume it could be due to UV Mapping converts the textures to a group (leg, arm, head etc if it is a character) which in turn makes it easier on the game engine/device a person is playing on, as just adding a texture/material to the model and that is it, the engine will have to work more? Is that the purpose for UV Mapping?
Thank you!
Renzatic
(Professor Emeritus Billy H. Wafflesmith XIV Esq.)
2
If all you’re doing is working with straight colors, then you can get away with just using materials. But if you want to add in a good amount of detail, you’ll probably need to UV map your character.
It’d help if you could show an example of the style you have in mind, because you can mix and match things a bit, depending.
Honestly, I would say yes, UV Mapping is a ‘must’ - as you put it - in the context you gave. In the example that you use, the models are certainly UV mapped, even if they appear simplistic; those are image textures - 100%.
Id also add, that if your aim is to design characters for games, and you don’t understand this concept, then spend a little bit of time learning about the game character workflow, as its a very essential part of that process.
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Renzatic
(Professor Emeritus Billy H. Wafflesmith XIV Esq.)
5
Yeah, I thought your name was familiar.
You would probably have to do some unwrapping to get even that level of details for a game-ready character. In theory, you could probably do it with just single colored materials, but you’d have to bump the poly count up so high to fill in all the appropriate details that it wouldn’t be feasible for anything real-time.
Hey @Magnavis@Renzatic thank you both for your responses. I thought you would have to UV Map but wanted to check if it was a Must. Wasn’t trying to avoid it or anything, it was more of that work smart not harder approach haha. Don’t want to waste time if don’t have to. However I will keep doing more research and learning on workflows, just wanted to check.
“Texture painting” is another approach that sometimes works well. In this, you “spray paint” textures onto your model.
Beneath the surface, what this means is that you (perhaps, “automatically”) UV-map your model. Then, you take information from other texture sources and “spray” them onto your model, thus creating a new custom image-texture which your model then uses. The content of this consists of the final result of all your “spray painting.”
…well not necessarily, entirely depends upon various factors or more importantly pipeline/workflow when generating content whilst keeping in mind targeted platform, complexity, animation…etc and so forth.
Vertex painting as opposed too UV mapped low-poly objects, I think is another technique worth exploring, aswell.
Your questions can be interpreted in two ways :
1/ “'Do I have alternatives to UVMapping ?”
In some case you can map a texture differently and avoid UV mapping. There are other ways to texture an objects.
But UV remains the most secure way, especially given that you work on a game, you can be sure that they’ll export correctly from one software to another. Other methods are more software specifics.
As said Vertex colors is another option to just add color to an object.
2/ Now if the question is more ‘do I have to make a clean UVMap that takes a lot of time and efforts ?’
That also depend on the case : if your textures has a lot of details and you want to avoid distortions then taking the time to make a clean UV may save you some time in the long run.
But say you only need a gradient over the whole object, or a flat color, then the UV map can be made quick and dirty, in that case a simple “project from view” can be enough .
Fantastic thank you very much. Looks like UV Mapping is the way to go. I haven’t tried Vertex Painting or Texture Painting as more going for the simplistic style look of one colour on objects as the moment, so checking as you can assign materials to an object, if UV Mapping was a must. It makes sense to UV Map.
You can look at how it does coloring, that’s a technique quite common in video game / low poly modeling : https://youtu.be/MY0-_ax8N7Y?t=494
Basically, everything as the same material, the same image texture that is a color palette.
Then UV are scaled to 0, so they all overlap at one point. (you can have a basic unwrap, using project from view or smart UV project)
Then he select some part of the mesh and move the UV to a particular color.
I don’t know much about game engines , but maybe having a lot of different materials can be an issue.
In that case this technique is at least used a lot.
There is something called “Lazy UV”. One dude which use C4D make nice, cute, stylized low ( and not so low ) poly game models with this method. You can’t believe, entire model have one 64 x64 pix map. Some even smaller. … like 16x16 pix ArtStation - Gradient Shark ArtStation - Gradient Forest
When you check UV this look as mess. I don’t dig too much in this technique, but I guess that mighty YouTube have some tutorials.
Models can look nice for stylized games on phones or AR-VR, where textures are big issues.
Got to love Imphenzia! His videos helped me with rigging and animations. Great youtube support from him.
Only question is, using this technique, which I did use in past, will it still look good in game and keep that resolution with the one colour per mesh/part.
@alekba your examples of the forest and shark, they look great fun style as well. Just wondering if I was to use this technique with colour on the parts I want it to, it will still look good in a game. I will give it a try.
I am going for the style look of one colour texture not realistic “real skin” texture. Colours will be fine, like Fortnite/Little Devil Inside and alot of models I see on here where they are one colour to a part of model, IE Skin/weapon/clothes instead of realistic texturing.
Below is an example again as you can see it is one colour to each part.
Bydefinition, there has to be some kind of “UV mapping” to describe where in the 2D “texture space” the textures for any particular 3D face are supposed to come from. That technical aspect is unavoidable. But there are many ways to do it, depending on your situation.
It would be better to make little tests to be sure, But I don’t see why it would be different from blender/eevee. Some artifact may come from the way the texture is interpolated, but great chances are that you can control that in the textures options on the game engine. Anyway if you have borders around the UV it should work . Avoid having UV on the edges of two different colors, if you see what I mean.
