What exactly is UV and UVW Mapping?

Posted by Michael Stum on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by Michael Stum
Published on 2010-12-29T11:10:40Z Indexed on 2010/12/29 11:59 UTC
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Filed under:

3d

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textures

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uvw-mapping

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basics

Trying to understand some basic 3D concepts, at the moment I'm trying to figure out how textures actually work. I know that UV and UVW mapping are techniques that map 2D Textures to 3D Objects - Wikipedia told me as much. I googled for explanations but only found tutorials that assumed that I already know what it is.

From my understanding, each 3D Model is made out of Points, and several points create a face? Does each point or face have a secondary coordinate that maps to a x/y position in the 2D Texture? Or how does unwrapping manipulate the model?

Also, what does the W in UVW really do, what does it offer over UV? As I understand it, W maps to the Z coordinate, but in what situation would I have different textures for the same X/Y and different Z, wouldn't the Z part be invisible? Or am I completely misunderstanding this?

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