METASEQUOIA v2.3.4 - INTRODUCTION TO UV MAPPING
Is UV Remapping really that hard that I have to make an introduction? No, but Meta offers alot of options that will make your project go alot faster. Especially once you get into remapping the UV for a primitive or creating your own Textures from scratch. When you open the UV Mapping in Meta, a whole mess of stuff comes into play and it will help you to know what each one does.
Configuration
The Configuration Menu can be brought up by selecting Config in the UV Extension.
- Length of Guide - I have no idea what this does. Haven't found a need for it.
- Grid - Supimoses a Grid over your texture. Useful for lining up vertexes if you don't want to manually input the UV Coordinates.
- Repeat - Once thought this had to do with the Background repeat, but it doesn't.
- Snap to Center of Grid - Rather than your movements automatically fixing on the Apexes of the grid, this will make them snap to the center of it. Brain Surgery.
- Shortcut - Here, you can setup some shortcut keys to automatically set functions while you work. As if you didn't have enough to remember already.
UV Buttons
- Unwrap - Hides the UV Map so that you can view the Model without clutter.
- Material - Shows or Hides Material Objects.
- Select - Turns the Polygon overlay of the Texture On or Off. On would be recommended.
- Repeat - Repeats the Texture along the Background. Highly annoying and quite useless if you Map your UV Properly.
- Grid - Puts a grid overlay onto the Texture to facilitate lining up UV Vertices.
- Snap - Changes free movement to a Grid-Snap effect. Not really useful unless you're working with a really fine grid, because it disables precise adjustments.
Model Buttons
- Object - Shows or Hides the object on top of the Texture.
- Select - Turning this option on and then selecting Vertices on the UV Map will give you a pinpoint view of what you've selected on the Model. Again, not really useful, in my opinion, but it's still kinda cool.
UV Edit Extension
Buttons listed Top to Bottom, Left to Right. Like that reading thing.
- Vert - Allows selection of only Vertices on Texture.
- Face - Allows selection of Faces on Texture.
- Apex - Allows selection of everything on Texture.
- Select - Changes tool to Selection only. Technically not useful, since you can select with the Move tool, also.
- Move - Allows you to move Editable Objects on the Texture.
- Rotate - Allows you to rotate Editable Objects on the Texture.
- Scale - Allows you to scale Editable Objects on the Texture.
- Allows you to remap the UV Coordinates onto a Flat Plane.
- Allows you to remap the UV Coordinates onto a Cylindrical Plane.
- Allows you to remap the UV Coordinates onto a Spherical Plane.
- U Coordinate - Left and Right movement on the Texture. Allows for input of precise coordinates
- V Coordinate - Up and Down movement on the Texture. Allows for input of precise coordinates.
- OK - Confirms coordinate input.
- Normalize - Makes everything normal again? Just guessing.
- Unify - Combines Editable Objects into one Vertex.
- Separate - Separates Editable Objects into individual Polygons.
- Project - Again, I don't know.
- Align - Aligns Editable Objects on the V Coordinate.
- Copy - Copies Editable Objects.
- Paste - Pastes Editable Objects.
- SW Rotate - Don't know.
- SW Invert - Don't know.
- Atlas - Handy tool if you've made a completely new Texture. This breaks apart the Polygons into a Model type view and places them onto the Texture.
- Export - Good for external Mapping if used with the Atlas function. This let's you save a copy of the only the UV Mapping that can be placed onto your new Texture to define positions better.
- Config - Brings up Configuration Menu.
Movement Tool - Use this if you lack 2 or more buttons and a wheel on your mouse.
©2006 Grumpy Rarab Ltd.