Dimension3D opened this issue on Jun 16, 2006 ยท 21 posts
Dimension3D posted Sun, 18 June 2006 at 8:24 AM
The UV coordinates of the UV-map are the projection of XYZ coordinates of the points of the 3D object to a 2D map for surface texturing. For each polygon in the 3D object, there is a polygon in the UV map. When applying a 2D texture to the 3D object, the UV-map is used as follows. The area of the texture covered by a polygon (or better triangle, as the polygons are divided into triangles internally) in the UV-map is taken and projected to the according polygon of the 3D object. The triangles of the 3D object are flat themself, so the mapping is rather obvious.
A good UV-map is important when using patterned textures to avoid distortions when the pattern is applied to the surface of the 3D object. If you want to learn more about UV-mapping, at best have a look at an UV-mapping forum, there's a good one over at PoserPros.
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