Getting started with UV textures in Animator

I’ll start with the basics.

Every vertex of a model has a “texture vertex” associated with it. As Camera is trying to figure out what a given pixel is supposed to look like, it does an interpolation of the texture vertices for the polygon it’s trying to render. It then uses this to look up the portion of the texture map with the corresponding UV value.

You can think of these texture coordinates as forming a sort of bear-skin rug. The rug is flat but used to be bear-shaped. Models with UV coordinates are sort of cut open and layed out flat. It’s up to the modelling software to decide what this looks like.

If you want to start playing with UVs, try some of the more complex UberShapes. The Torus is a great example. The torus is cut across and around the circumference and unfolded. The wireframe geometry you’ll see in the texture window is a flat plane. That wireframe is really the UVs.

The Cylinder does a square UV space for the long part and separate square spaces for the top and bottom.

Use the Check Grid texture to really understand the results (on the EIAS DVD).

Blair M. Burtan
Northern Lights Productions www.northernlights3d.com