Blender for Dummies by Jason van Gumster

Author:Jason van Gumster
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: For Dummies
Published: 2011-03-27T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 8-7: The New Image buttons for adding a test grid image.

You can unwrap your mesh without adding a test grid, but a test grid gives you a frame of reference to work from when unwrapping.

Also, note the height and width of the test grid image. The most obvious thing is that it’s square; the height and width are equal. When you create the image, you can make it nonsquare, but UV texturing is optimized for square images, so it’s in your best interest to keep it square.

Another tip that helps performance when working with UV textures is to make your texture size a power of two — a number that you get by continually multiplying 2 by itself. The default size is 1,024 pixels square, or 210. The next larger size is 2,048 (211) pixels, and the next size down would be 512 (29) pixels.

Generating and editing UV coordinates

All righty, after marking seams on your mesh and adding a test grid for reference, now you’re ready to unwrap your mesh. From Edit mode, unwrapping is pretty simple:

1. Select all vertices (A).

Remember that the A key is a toggle, so you may have to hit it twice to get everything selected.

2. Unwrap the mesh (U⇒Unwrap).

Poof! Your mesh is now unwrapped! If you used a Suzanne to practice unwrapping, you may have something that looks like Figure 8-8.

Figure 8-8: An unwrapped Suzanne head.

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