UVW Mapping | MrBluesummers.com

Real-World Map Size is Your Friend

Written April 12th, 2012
Categories: Articles, Textures / Materials
1 Comment »

If you’re like me, you hate UVW mapping. It’s tedious. Most of my projects go from “this is going to be sweet” to “I’ll do it later” around the time that I start applying image-mapped materials to objects.

Let me show you what Real-World Map Size is and why you should love it as much as I do.

Basically, Real-World Map Size adjusts the relative size of an object’s default UVW mapping to match your scene’s scale. This effectively adjusts image mapping to fit the scale of your scene, and normalizes the Autodesk Material Library.

Here's where you find it.

Let’s take a deeper dive into what this means and why you should check this box 100% of the time.

Wood material, you say? I don't see it…

Consider the image above where I’ve created a scaled scene of about 80 cm across. I’ve created a ceramic tray with wooden objects inside using the Autodesk Hardwood material. As you can see, it doesn’t look great. The worst part of this is that it might lead less experienced users to believe that the Autodesk material library isn’t very powerful or versatile.

False! When we engage Real-World Map Size, we see the material really shine through.

The maps that define the wood material match the centimeter size of the scene.

Fabulous! The materials look much more realistic and can be easily applied to objects within the scene for instant realism. Consider the render below, where I’ve copied over several materials with before and after images. Remember; all of this works properly because my scene is physically correct.

The closer objects are real-world coordinate enabled.

Decals

Written August 16th, 2009
Categories: Modeling, UVWs / Texturing, Videos
10 comments

Hey all,

This week we’ve got a really super technique- decals. I’ll be showing you how to very quickly add some uniqueness to otherwise repetitive textures in 3dsMax and game levels.

Basically what you’ll do is create a layer of polygons just above the original geometry. This is accomplished by selecting polygons in the editable poly object, using the detach tool (as clone), and applying a push modifier. Then you can apply an opacity mapped material to add graffiti, posters, or trash to almost any surface! As always, don’t hesitate to leave comments for improvement or ideas for future Monday Movies!

Mirroring UVW Coordinates

Written August 11th, 2009
Categories: UVWs / Texturing, Videos
10 comments

Hey everyone,

I’m afraid that this isn’t my best performance. It’s late, and the audio has a nasty popping noise that I can’t get rid of. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that this Movie’s got something for everyone! I’ll show you how to quickly mirror UVWs using a symmetry modifier to get more texture space. Who doesn’t want more UVW space? As usual, don’t hesitate to leave comments or suggestions for future Monday Movies!

Copy and paste under the "Edit" menu.

Edit: Mr. Tom of FGI Services noted that you can also layer up UVW coordinates using the Copy/Paste function of the UVW editor. You can find this under the Edit menu item (see image). To use this technique, start by selecting the parent cluster- the one you want to stay still- and use Edit>Copy. Then select the target cluster- the one you want to move to the parent cluster- and use Edit>Paste. You can use this second step (Edit>Paste) as many times as needed. 3 cheers for Mr. Tom!

UVW Mapped Roads

Written July 13th, 2009
Categories: UVWs / Texturing, Videos
2 comments

This week’s show is up! I’m not feeling well, so it’s a quick one. We’re looking at how you can create a road in 3dsMax using the spline tool. What makes this technique special is that we’re UVW mapping the spline so that we can tile a material over the length of the road. All you need is a simple street texture!

WeldTexVert 3dsMax Script

Written March 16th, 2009
Categories: Downloads, Scripts
2 comments

For the war effort, I’ve gone through my old script library and picked out some of the choicest bits I wrote back when I was still trying to be a tools programmer. WeldTexVert is a modal window that’s automatically added to your UnwrapUVW menu bar that lets you interactively weld texture vertices in the same way you would with editable polygons.

The good news is that you can bind it to a hotkey so you never have to worry about the original weld vertex tool ever again. The bad news is, you need to select the UVW vertices you want to weld before opening the window. Sorry about that!

Either way, I hope you enjoy the tool.

Click this link to download the Weld Vertex Tool Script. Just unzip it to your desktop or somewhere on your hard drive and run it via the Maxscript command menu in 3dsMax.

Cutting & Dressing Texture Maps

Written January 16th, 2009
Categories: UVWs / Texturing, Videos
1 Comment »

I’m afraid I don’t have a new tutorial for you, so in exchange I’m offering two neat bits. The first is that I’m uploading the Monday Movie a few days early this week, so that you can enjoy it that much sooner. It also shows you that I’ve been working on something so you don’t think I was goofing off- ignoring my promise of a new 3dsMax tutorial.

The other neat thing is that this Monday Movie is special! I’ve added a whole new intro sequence, and the video footage is now in wide-screen. I know it’s a little blurry, but trust me; next week is going to be sharper than your mom’s opinions. Fun!

This week’s Monday movie is about cutting and dressing texture maps by using what your perception of the diffuse map is. I show you a paint-chips texture, and because I know the materials that are present in the image I’m able to pull out a bump map and a glossy/specular map as well!

UVW Channels

Written January 11th, 2009
Categories: UVWs / Texturing, Videos
3 comments

Hey Everyone!

I’ve got a new monday movie for you. This week we’re looking at UVW channels and how you can use them to create more than one UV layout for your objects. Why is this important? Well, for one thing, it lets you use different UVW layouts for different maps in your material- allowing you to assign displacement maps after you’ve set up the rest of the material. You could also use this (theoretically) to juice your maps for all their worth in a low-poly situation. You might only need opacity mapping for part of the character, so why not get all 1024×1024 for that spot?

Anyway, in this video we’re looking at the first scenario; applying a displacement map to an object already set up with a material.

Static UVW Mapping

Written January 4th, 2009
Categories: Materials / Shaders, UVWs / Texturing, Videos
4 comments

Hey Everyone!

This week’s Monday Movie is on using static UVW mapping in 3dsMax. The modifier stack is a beautiful thing because it allows you to use awesome techniques like this! You can work on the editable poly object at the base of the stack while keeping a UVW map modifier on top. This lets you model without worrying too much about wrecking the mapping. This technique is most useful in low-poly work and simple objects like barrels and butterflies.

Mapping through Reactor Cloth

Written June 18th, 2008
Categories: 3d Studio Max, Articles, Offsite, Textures / Materials
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I will explain you how to use reactor cloth in mapping any object or model. All of you noticed that every model required lot of tweaking to remove the stretching.