3-D text with Bitmap wrapping.....

Hey all...need a little help finding a tutorial. I saw it ahwilke back, but for the life of me cannot find it anywhere.

It is having to do with creating 3-D leters and wrapping a bitmap image around them...ie I want to spell my Mother's name and use pictures of all of us family wrapped around the letters....so C would be pictures of my Dad...A would be myself...and so on. I've already created bitmap images of a bunch of pictures put together in a collage of each of us....kinda cool really...

I would appreciate if you could point me in the right direction.....thanks.

Do you mean UV wrapping?

There are lots of UV editors, some free that come with tutorials. I'm not sure what program you are using, but if it is capable of doing 3D graphics other than letters, it should be able to be UV mapped and textured. If this is not what you mean, the nevermind. :D

If you are not sure what UVmapping is, it's the unfolding of an object and making a map out of it for texuring. Once the object is mapped and unfolded, the map can be exported to a Painting program and textured.

like this would be a cube..

Also, if you are using a 3D application that normally puts out Web 3D graphics let's say, they are not as good for texture mapping as 3D modeling programs are. The letters "ABCDEF" were typed out in each type of application.

Below is an example what I mean. On the left is a 3D Lettering program. Notice that it has many more facets than the 3D Model example. Also in 3D lettering programs the letters are treated as one object making UVmapping and thusly painting on the object much more difficult.

Both examples were UVmapped in a free utility called UVmapper.

Hope this helps, if not just call me "windy." :D

Here's a little bit of fun with an image of the former post. I used the statistics image on a 1 D plane and the letters "ABCDEF."