8. Unwrapping and UVs in Blender
Unwrapping is a fundamental step in animation that comes before adding textures to a 3D model. Without it, the software wouldn’t be able to get information to determine position, rotation, and scaling of the texture. UVs (the 2D counterparts of XYZs in 3D space) are the internal 2D positions of the vertices of a 3D mesh; they define how a 2D texture will be projected on the mesh’s surface. One way to think of the unwrapping process is to visualize a globe. Imagine taking the Earth’s surface and flattening it into a map. This process of converting a 3D shape to a 2D surface is referred to as unwrapping.
Unwrapping may look a little odd, and it’s a task a lot of people dislike or fear, but that’s usually due to ...
Get Learning Blender: A Hands-On Guide to Creating 3D Animated Character= s, Second Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
