UV Unwrapping

[Rhee]

Okay. So, I want to do this thing called UV Unwrap.

I am in Blender (2.61), and I do my little modelling, and I set a material and add a texture and run a couple of renders to see that it looks about the way that I'll want it to, but i want to fine-tune the texture a bit (like manually adjust the spots where the texture repeats so that it doesn't look so /obvious/, and that sort of thing), and I assume that i need to do it by UV unwrapping. (perhaps that's wrong. if so, someone say so )

So, having done all that stuff above, i go into edit mode and hit U to unwrap.

And then what is supposed to happen? i mean. Nothing happens. No crazy unwrapped mesh picture appears anywhere that I can find. What am I doing wrong/right? Am I even close here? lol

I've tried to find tutorials through the wiki (no such luck). Maybe i just look for Blender tuts in general, not Uru specific ones?

Thanks for any assistance!

[dendwaler]

Unfortunately UV unwrapping is not uru related.

So in your case you will have to look for blender tuts.
In general the idea behind unwrapping is the same as when you unfold a carton moving box.
The 3 dimensional object is fold out and flattened to one piece of Carton with cuts and edges.

In blender you have to be sure that the texture input is set to UV.
Standard it will be set on ORCO.

You have to open a second window in Blender by splitting the main window.
This new window has to be set to UV/image editor.
Now you see in the first window your 3d object in the second nothing yet.

In the 3 d window go to the edit mode with the tab button.
Do not try to unwrap the whole object in once but first only a few faces .

The unwrapped faces will be shown now in the second screen.

Begin to learn this with some really simple objects
1) a cube
2) a cylinder
3) a uvsphere

You must learn and understand to unwrap them on several different ways.

Do not begin with unwrapping anything else before you are able to do this superb .

Later you will learn to see that every object can be seen as a modified cube, cylinder or UV sphere.
Or is basicly builded up with those.

I do not want to uncourage you, but unwrapping is the most difficult thing of modelling.
It costed me 2 years before i understood what i was doing.

I will try to make a tutorial for our wiki, but its lots of work.
May be by the end of this week i will have made a first step with a simple example.

[dendwaler]

Oh yes, it has been told at least 10 times before on this forum.

Learn these tutorials , they are excellent!


http://gryllus.net/Blender/3D.html

[Rhee]

Aah, thanks dendwaler for the link to that tutorial site. I understood what to do to actually align the UV images, i just couldn't figure out how to get something to work with in the UV editor window! 1/4 way into the Introduction video got me on the right page lol. Things are going MUCH better now!