13.00 Introduction

Overview

Without textures, materials, and lighting a polygon mesh 3D model is just a bunch of points, edges, and faces. Smooth display can “round” off the edges to make a mesh look less faceted but to make a 3D model come to life textures and materials must be applied.

Texturing a 3D model is the process of assigning locations of all the 3D points in space of the model to points on a 2D texture image. To avoid confusion the coordinate axes of the texture space are labeled U and V rather than x and y.

Learning Objectives

• UV unwrap a 3D mesh
• Create a seamless texture
• Use texture painting tools to create and edit textures
• Use physical based material properties
• Add normal, bump, and other “maps” to the texture of a mesh

Key Terms

• UV space
• texture
• Physical Based Materials
• unwrap
• bump map
• normal map