UV's: Whatever happened to LCSM?

Support Materials and Textures
1

Hello Everyone:

Was just watching GreyBeard’s very dated tutorial on UV Mapping (from version 2.34) here:

http://www.blender.org/education-help/video-tutorials/modelmateriallight/

He says that when unwrapping a UV map to use the LCSM, but I don’t see LCSM in 2.48a.

What’s the current best practice for unwrapping UV Maps?

BH

P.S. As an add on question - what resolution is best for doing UV Maps?

2

just choose the ‘unwrap’ option, which replaced the LSCM’ option and is essentially the same.

3

As an add on question - what resolution is best for doing UV Maps?
There’s no “best.” The resolution you choose depends on the maximum amount of the screen (in pixels) the texture will occupy. If your texture will at maximum occupy a 640-pixel wide area of screen real estate, then for best appearance that part of the texture should be at least 640 pixels across. Note that when a texture wraps around the object (like a head), you’re only looking at part of the total image. If the above example were for an image wrapped all the way around a head, the entire texture would need to be at least 1280 pixels across. So there’s some planning involved in making great textures.

Also note, many graphics cards work best with square images whose pixel dimensions are exact powers of 2 (eg1024x1024, 2048x2048).

4

So what should we do with LSCM? I couldn’t find this selection on Blender 2.49a.

5

Forget about LSCM and just select unwrap instead. The blender menus change over time so don’t rely on everything looking the same as in previous versions of blender in old tutorials.

Richard