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Texturing in Maya


Applying mappings

Now we have a material with our texture image, we can create the UV mapping which determine which parts of the texture show up on which parts of the model. We'll start off with the body of the gun. Select two faces as shown in the image below:

Select two faces on the side of the gun

Now open the Texture submenu of the Edit Polygons menu and select the Planar Mapping option box. Select X-axis under Mapping Direction. A representation of the plane appears over the faces:

Planar mapping in X-axis

The selected faces appear in the UV Texture Editor:

Texture Editor

Right-click on the orange faces in the UV Texture Editor and choose Convert Selection to UVs from the Select menu. Four UVs are highlighted:

UVs selected

Press W to enter move mode and move the UVs out of the top-right corner of the UV plane. It doesn't matter where you put them; just move them out of the way. The reason is that the next time you apply a map it will show up in the same place. To avoid confusion when selecting UVs, we shift each set somewhere where they won't conflict. Later on we will move them back into position.

UVs moved

Now we'll repeat the procedure for the face on the other side of the gun. Because both sides will have an identical texture, we can reuse part of our image, flipped horizontally.

First select the faces on the other side:

Select the opposite two faces

Then apply a planar mapping:

Planar mapping in X-axis

And move the UVs so they line up exactly with the first set we already had selected:

Overlapping UVs

Next we'll apply some maps to other parts of the gun.


Jump to a section

| intro | part 1: Assigning materials | part 2: Applying mappings | part 3: Mapping the rest of the gun | part 4: Fitting the skin |