| | 1 | = Texturing With Blender = |
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| | 3 | This tutorial shows how to apply texture coordinates to a mesh. Your model should be finished. All unnecessary vertices should be merged. Every future modification of your model will destroy the texture coordinates of |
| | 4 | the affected faces! We will use LSCM, acronym for Least Squares Conforming Map, which is one of the algorithms for unwrapping a mesh onto the 2-dimensional UV space. It is a very powerful unwrapping method because it can preserve the shape of each face very good. |
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| | 6 | == Marking the Seams == |
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| | 8 | Go into Edit mode and activate edge selection mode with Ctrl + TAB. To map the model to a 2-dimensional UV space, you will obviously have to make some cuts in you mesh. This is how you tell Blender where you want to make cuts: |
| | 9 | Select the appropriate edges, press Ctrl + E and select "Mark Seam". The edge will turn orange, an indication that it has become a seam. If you change your mind, select the edge again, press Ctrl + E and choose "Clear Seam" to remove this seam. |
| | 10 | Try to find a good balance for the number of seams: many seams will reduce the deformation of the faces a lot (which is good) but it can be quite tricky to create a texture for it, because you will end up with a lot of small parts of your texture (which is bad). However, it is always a good idea, to make seams where the model has natural borders. You could separate an aircraft or spaceship into wings, engines, weeapons, cockpit, gear and hull, for example. |
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| | 12 | == Unwrapping the Mesh == |
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| | 14 | == Modifying UV Layout == |
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| | 16 | == Paint the Texture == |
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| | 18 | == Apply Texture to Mesh == |
