Texturing an Irregular Object

[ODdOnLifeItself]

When doing 3D object modeling in Blender, it often becomes necessary to texturize "complex" objects. Objects that aren't a basic geometry, such as cubes, spheres, etc. or similarly shaped will require some level of UV unwrapping to make the texture "hug" the object.

For some objects, the Flat or Sphere mapping will work, even if the objects aren't a plane or a sphere. For some objects, not.

Below are four different ways to map the same Camouflage image onto the same object. With the Flat mapping, we have the banding along the z-axis. With the Sphere, we have some pinching on top and a slight swirling.



The first passable solution is the very simple UV Unwrap from View. All it's doing is mapping the image flat onto the object based on the camera's view of the object. This does pretty good and is often a simple solution to a complex problem. The drawback is that the texture doesn't appear to really follow the bends and turns of the object. It de-emphasizes the 3D-ness of the object. Different views from the "Mapped from View" angles will make the texture look unnatural, sometimes exaggeratedly so.

The best solution is to manually unwrap the object. I marked a line of edges along the bottom edge and over to the other side and back. Then I chose Mark Seam.



This tells the software where it is going to "cut" the shape of the object in order to try and lay it flat with the least distortion. (Being in Edit mode with all faces selected...) After choosing "u" for UnWrap, I went to the UV Editor and it shows the faces that make up the object, laid "flat", using your selected seams as the cutting points. There were two roughly oval "islands" of faces, but with logical connection, as on the object. Opening an Image allows that unwrapped object to be positioned relative to the image.



After this, you must tell the software that it is to use the UV coordinates and (counter-intuitively) you must also Open the image in the normal way of mapping textures. ie. in the Textures dialog (Setting Image and Opening and then setting Texture Coordinates to UV). Hint: Since you already loaded the image for the UV mapping, you can chose it directly without having to go load it again.

Summary,... if the normal wrapping methods don't look right, it is very easy to try "UnWrap from View" to get a texture on that will often work even though it's just a flat mapping onto the object disregarding the geometry. When additional precision is needed, then manually unwrapping it is the way to get full control over the look of the object. For unwrapping, try to get all the faces of the object that you can see from the camera view into an island of faces, so that the texture wraps over the object in the logical (expected) manner. ie. no abrupt changes of texture at face edges



Hope this helps...

Note: Normally, you WILL struggle at manually unwrapping at first. It's not easy. Still, sometimes when you want to have it just right and/or especially if the camera gets close to the object, then manually unwrapping is the way to go. In this example, because the object is still so simple, the Smart Project gives similar results without having to mark seams.

James

[angelize]

Thanks for explaining this James, I watched a video on this but it really helps to have some written instructions as well.