In
this tutorial I'll be working with a
space ship I recently modeled. It's
a fairly complicated object mapping-wise
- it has lots of curved surfaces mixed
in with a lot of chamfered edges and
beveled segments, and they're all going
to require a different method for mapping.
I'm going to assume that you have your
own model that needs UVW-mapping coordinates,
though hopefully it isn't as complicated
as this. (As a note, don't be fazed
by the fact that this ship has multiple
smoothing groups and materials set up.
None of this should affect the UVW-mapping
process.)
Before
we begin, I'm going to go over a few
basics, and mention a few shortcuts.
First, three hotkeys you'll find immensely
useful are F2, F3, and F4. F2, when
pressed, toggles "Shade Selected
Faces" mode - essentially, when
this mode is on, selected faces will
appear in bright red. F3 toggles wireframe/shaded
mode, and F4 toggles "Edged Faces"
mode. All are very useful throughout
the modeling process, but especially
when doing UVW-mapping.
If
you haven't already, select your object,
and add an "Unwrap UVW" modifier.
Last
on our list of basics... Clicking on
the "Unwrap UVW" modifier
in the modifier stack will go to the
"Select Face" sub-object level.
This means you can click on your object,
in the viewport, to select the faces
you want to work on. And... I hope you
know this already, but you can ctrl-click
to add more faces to the selction set,
and alt-click to remove faces.
