For me, UVs (UVWs) are daunting. They intimidate me just a little bit. Really.
This was my first intro to UVs.
For a bit of a recap. What Uvs are/do is they take your 3D model and they cut it up into pieces like a sewing pattern and lay them out flat so you can add paint and text and all that great stuff to them. You actually take the pattern from your 3D program into a painting type program and you color, draw, paint, stamp, and whatever else you might do, to them. Then you take the pattern back into your 3D program and tell it to apply the new pattern to the outsides of your object. And some how it knows exactly where to place everything.
There are a couple of catches to the whole process. You have to fit everything into this relatively small square called a zero to one space. And you will have seams that may or may not match up pretty. Sound fun? I suspect, given how very particular I can be, at some point I will be tweaking the UV layout to within a nanometer or a gnat’s eyebrow, if gnats have eyebrows.
As I approached this project, I did so with some trepidation. I know I need to learn how to use UVs. But they just look scary. And then I started watching the Digital Tutors tutorial “Getting Started with UVx in 3ds Max”. By the time I finished watching all 12 videos I was not so intimidated and kind of excited about the whole prospect. I mean the added control over the look of the material and the creativity. This is going to be fun.
That’s what I thought, right up to the point I opened 3ds Max 2015 and tried to do it. Argh! This looked so much easier on the video. Why can’t I get rid of that background properly? And wait that doesn’t move like it’s supposed to. It’s supposed to stitch it together and just move that section. Hold on, how do I flatten it?
I poked and prodded at it for a bit and decided that I needed to look into the tutorial that was recommended at the end of the one I just watched. “Texturing Game Props in 3ds Max and Photoshop”. I probably missed a step or two in the first set of tutorials. I could go back and watch it again, but it might be covered again in the next tutorial and it will also cover getting the UVs out of 3ds Max, into Photoshop, back out of Photoshop and back into 3ds Max. Or so I hope.
A couple of videos into the second tutorial and I’m back to being excited and ready to try UVs. Whew!