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Export a UV layout for texture creation in a 2D application.
Type:
Tutorial
Length:
8 min.
Tutorial resources
These downloadable resources will be used to complete this tutorial:
Transcript
00:03
Our next step is to save out a UV template image
00:08
so that we can use that as a guide to create the graphics
00:11
of these button and screen labels
00:14
that's done using the unwrap UVW modifier.
00:19
So we want to once again select all the objects
00:22
that we wish to map.
00:24
And we didn't create a selection set in the previous movie.
00:27
We probably should have done that to make it a little bit easier.
00:29
But let's go through the motions. Once again,
00:32
I'll open up the layer explorer
00:35
and open up the radio layer. We
00:37
want to select the
00:39
display L CD object because it's hiding behind the glass and kind of hard to select.
00:44
And then we want to select the other buttons,
00:47
logos
00:48
and elements that need to be mapped. Hold down control and select the buttons,
00:53
select this logo.
00:55
Just select all those objects. Once again as we did before,
00:59
there's going to be 22 of them,
01:01
including all these buttons. And this model number object down here,
01:05
I've got 22 objects selected.
01:07
And this time I'm actually going to create a selection set,
01:09
I'll call it textured objects.
01:12
And now let's add a new modifier to those selected objects
01:16
which is unwrap UVW
01:21
once that's assigned,
01:22
we can go into the edit UV, roll out and click open UV editor.
01:28
And what we see is a layout
01:30
of the UV for all the selected objects.
01:33
The frame here represents the mapping space, the 0 to 1 space
01:38
that corresponds to our UVW map Gizmo.
01:42
We want to save this image
01:44
out to a template
01:46
so that then we can use that to create
01:48
the graphics that will be applied onto all these surfaces
01:52
to save out that UV template
01:54
go into the edit uvws menu,
01:57
choose tools,
01:59
render UV
01:60
W template.
02:02
And in this little pop up dialogue,
02:04
we can do a test. Let's click on render UV template at the bottom.
02:09
So here's what we get by default,
02:11
we've got a width and height of 10 and 24 by 10 and 24.
02:15
Well, that's fine in a lot of cases in this case.
02:18
However, because I want to be using vector art
02:21
that adds a little bit more complexity to this.
02:24
Basically vector programs work with pixels per inch.
02:28
And I need to know how many pixels to plug in to the width and height here
02:33
to correspond to a particular real world scale.
02:37
In this case, a 10 centimeter square which represents the total area here.
02:43
All right. So close this window
02:45
to calculate the pixel values. We can use a handy tool.
02:49
It's called a print size assistant,
02:52
we can go into rendering
02:54
prince size assistant.
02:57
And within here we're working in millimeters or metrics.
03:01
And let's choose millimeters
03:03
the size of our canvas, which is the UVW map
03:07
is 10 centimeters. So we'll put in a paper width of 100 millimeters,
03:12
a paper height of 100 millimeters.
03:15
And we see now at a pixels per inch or DP I of 300
03:19
we would have a pixel value of
03:25
Well, that's not really going to be good enough to resolve the lines
03:29
in the UVW template with much accuracy.
03:32
So I'm going to increase this up to 600 pixels per inch.
03:36
And that means we're going to have a corresponding
03:38
pixel width and height
03:40
of 2362.
03:42
So that's what I'm actually going to plug in to the render uvs dialogue.
03:46
We can close the print size wizard
03:49
give this a width here
03:51
of
03:54
press tab and enter that in the height as well 2362.
03:59
Now we've got the correct size
04:01
that's going to correspond to a 10 centimeter square
04:06
at 600 pixels per inch.
04:08
If we click render UV template, once again,
04:11
we'll see it's kind of hard to see because it's aliased,
04:14
but we can zoom in there
04:15
that's done by holding down the control key and then clicking.
04:19
So now we're seeing this at uh 1 to 2 size.
04:23
Basically, I want this to be a little bit easier to see
04:26
by adding a fill
04:28
in these areas where the buttons and screen elements are present.
04:32
And also
04:33
by eliminating the alpha channel.
04:36
Because if we display the alpha channel here,
04:39
we see
04:40
that the area outside of those edges is actually transparent.
04:46
That's actually gonna make it harder for us in
04:48
an illustration program.
04:50
So I click on the alpha channel display and go back to an RGB display
04:54
in the render uvs dialogue over here. Let's make some changes.
04:58
We'll change the fill mode
05:00
to solid
05:02
click render UV template.
05:04
And we got another window here.
05:07
And now we see we're getting a solid fill in the area of each object.
05:11
We're also getting this red highlighting
05:13
and that's because these objects are 3D
05:17
and the backside of those objects are being mapped
05:20
and that's causing overlapping uvs.
05:23
Well, we don't care about that because
05:25
we'll never see the backs of these objects anyway.
05:28
So just to remove that distraction, we can turn off show overlap and
05:32
render again.
05:33
We're getting closer here.
05:35
We're almost there.
05:37
We also just want to get rid of these green edges.
05:39
If I control, click here and zoom in a couple of times,
05:42
those are the seam edges,
05:44
that's just going to be more confusing, so I can turn that off as well.
05:48
And now we're finally ready to render
05:50
our template with the settings that we wanted
05:53
click render UV template
05:55
and this does have an alpha channel once again,
05:58
but we can say this out with the alpha channel disabled.
06:01
So click to save the image, click on the little floppy disk icon.
06:06
Now we want to save into some working folder,
06:09
probably not into the scene assets, images.
06:13
And the reason is that I like to keep scene assets,
06:15
images only for textures that are used in the scene.
06:20
But this is going to be a template for creating a texture to be used in the scene.
06:24
So I'm going to go up a couple levels here
06:27
and we can go into scene assets.
06:31
And instead of saving into the images folder,
06:33
we can create a new folder in here
06:36
and we can call that
06:38
working,
06:39
go into that folder
06:41
and then save the file name. We'll call it UV template
06:45
and the type will choose
06:47
PNG or portable network graphics
06:50
go into the set up.
06:52
You might need to click the set up button twice
06:54
and we want 24 bits
06:57
with no alpha
06:59
look OK
07:00
and click save.
07:02
Now that's been saved. And we can check that
07:04
we can go to the file menu
07:06
and choose view image file.
07:09
And here's our file UV template dot PNG
07:12
open that up
07:13
and we can see that it has no alpha. If we choose the alpha channel, it's
07:17
totally opaque
07:19
and that's exactly what we wanted.
07:21
So now that's suitable for using in
07:23
another program such as Photoshop or illustrator
07:26
in order to create all the graphics that we need.
07:29
That process is really out of scope for this tutorial.
07:32
We're only dealing with what we can do in three Ds max,
07:36
what your basic process is.
07:37
You're going to bring that UV template into an image editor such as Photoshop
07:42
in order to create the button and screen graphics based upon the template.
07:46
If you do work in a resolution independent program,
07:50
which deals with vector images such as illustrator,
07:53
you'll want to interpret this P and G file
07:56
as having a pixels per inch of 600
07:59
and you don't want to resample the pixels.
08:02
OK.
08:02
So once again,
08:03
we're not going to go through that whole process in
08:05
Photoshop and illustrator or any other image editing program.
08:08
We're just going to skip forward to the stage
08:10
at which that image has been already created.
08:13
But that's how to save out a UV template
08:16
in preparation for creating texture maps.
Video transcript
00:03
Our next step is to save out a UV template image
00:08
so that we can use that as a guide to create the graphics
00:11
of these button and screen labels
00:14
that's done using the unwrap UVW modifier.
00:19
So we want to once again select all the objects
00:22
that we wish to map.
00:24
And we didn't create a selection set in the previous movie.
00:27
We probably should have done that to make it a little bit easier.
00:29
But let's go through the motions. Once again,
00:32
I'll open up the layer explorer
00:35
and open up the radio layer. We
00:37
want to select the
00:39
display L CD object because it's hiding behind the glass and kind of hard to select.
00:44
And then we want to select the other buttons,
00:47
logos
00:48
and elements that need to be mapped. Hold down control and select the buttons,
00:53
select this logo.
00:55
Just select all those objects. Once again as we did before,
00:59
there's going to be 22 of them,
01:01
including all these buttons. And this model number object down here,
01:05
I've got 22 objects selected.
01:07
And this time I'm actually going to create a selection set,
01:09
I'll call it textured objects.
01:12
And now let's add a new modifier to those selected objects
01:16
which is unwrap UVW
01:21
once that's assigned,
01:22
we can go into the edit UV, roll out and click open UV editor.
01:28
And what we see is a layout
01:30
of the UV for all the selected objects.
01:33
The frame here represents the mapping space, the 0 to 1 space
01:38
that corresponds to our UVW map Gizmo.
01:42
We want to save this image
01:44
out to a template
01:46
so that then we can use that to create
01:48
the graphics that will be applied onto all these surfaces
01:52
to save out that UV template
01:54
go into the edit uvws menu,
01:57
choose tools,
01:59
render UV
01:60
W template.
02:02
And in this little pop up dialogue,
02:04
we can do a test. Let's click on render UV template at the bottom.
02:09
So here's what we get by default,
02:11
we've got a width and height of 10 and 24 by 10 and 24.
02:15
Well, that's fine in a lot of cases in this case.
02:18
However, because I want to be using vector art
02:21
that adds a little bit more complexity to this.
02:24
Basically vector programs work with pixels per inch.
02:28
And I need to know how many pixels to plug in to the width and height here
02:33
to correspond to a particular real world scale.
02:37
In this case, a 10 centimeter square which represents the total area here.
02:43
All right. So close this window
02:45
to calculate the pixel values. We can use a handy tool.
02:49
It's called a print size assistant,
02:52
we can go into rendering
02:54
prince size assistant.
02:57
And within here we're working in millimeters or metrics.
03:01
And let's choose millimeters
03:03
the size of our canvas, which is the UVW map
03:07
is 10 centimeters. So we'll put in a paper width of 100 millimeters,
03:12
a paper height of 100 millimeters.
03:15
And we see now at a pixels per inch or DP I of 300
03:19
we would have a pixel value of
03:25
Well, that's not really going to be good enough to resolve the lines
03:29
in the UVW template with much accuracy.
03:32
So I'm going to increase this up to 600 pixels per inch.
03:36
And that means we're going to have a corresponding
03:38
pixel width and height
03:40
of 2362.
03:42
So that's what I'm actually going to plug in to the render uvs dialogue.
03:46
We can close the print size wizard
03:49
give this a width here
03:51
of
03:54
press tab and enter that in the height as well 2362.
03:59
Now we've got the correct size
04:01
that's going to correspond to a 10 centimeter square
04:06
at 600 pixels per inch.
04:08
If we click render UV template, once again,
04:11
we'll see it's kind of hard to see because it's aliased,
04:14
but we can zoom in there
04:15
that's done by holding down the control key and then clicking.
04:19
So now we're seeing this at uh 1 to 2 size.
04:23
Basically, I want this to be a little bit easier to see
04:26
by adding a fill
04:28
in these areas where the buttons and screen elements are present.
04:32
And also
04:33
by eliminating the alpha channel.
04:36
Because if we display the alpha channel here,
04:39
we see
04:40
that the area outside of those edges is actually transparent.
04:46
That's actually gonna make it harder for us in
04:48
an illustration program.
04:50
So I click on the alpha channel display and go back to an RGB display
04:54
in the render uvs dialogue over here. Let's make some changes.
04:58
We'll change the fill mode
05:00
to solid
05:02
click render UV template.
05:04
And we got another window here.
05:07
And now we see we're getting a solid fill in the area of each object.
05:11
We're also getting this red highlighting
05:13
and that's because these objects are 3D
05:17
and the backside of those objects are being mapped
05:20
and that's causing overlapping uvs.
05:23
Well, we don't care about that because
05:25
we'll never see the backs of these objects anyway.
05:28
So just to remove that distraction, we can turn off show overlap and
05:32
render again.
05:33
We're getting closer here.
05:35
We're almost there.
05:37
We also just want to get rid of these green edges.
05:39
If I control, click here and zoom in a couple of times,
05:42
those are the seam edges,
05:44
that's just going to be more confusing, so I can turn that off as well.
05:48
And now we're finally ready to render
05:50
our template with the settings that we wanted
05:53
click render UV template
05:55
and this does have an alpha channel once again,
05:58
but we can say this out with the alpha channel disabled.
06:01
So click to save the image, click on the little floppy disk icon.
06:06
Now we want to save into some working folder,
06:09
probably not into the scene assets, images.
06:13
And the reason is that I like to keep scene assets,
06:15
images only for textures that are used in the scene.
06:20
But this is going to be a template for creating a texture to be used in the scene.
06:24
So I'm going to go up a couple levels here
06:27
and we can go into scene assets.
06:31
And instead of saving into the images folder,
06:33
we can create a new folder in here
06:36
and we can call that
06:38
working,
06:39
go into that folder
06:41
and then save the file name. We'll call it UV template
06:45
and the type will choose
06:47
PNG or portable network graphics
06:50
go into the set up.
06:52
You might need to click the set up button twice
06:54
and we want 24 bits
06:57
with no alpha
06:59
look OK
07:00
and click save.
07:02
Now that's been saved. And we can check that
07:04
we can go to the file menu
07:06
and choose view image file.
07:09
And here's our file UV template dot PNG
07:12
open that up
07:13
and we can see that it has no alpha. If we choose the alpha channel, it's
07:17
totally opaque
07:19
and that's exactly what we wanted.
07:21
So now that's suitable for using in
07:23
another program such as Photoshop or illustrator
07:26
in order to create all the graphics that we need.
07:29
That process is really out of scope for this tutorial.
07:32
We're only dealing with what we can do in three Ds max,
07:36
what your basic process is.
07:37
You're going to bring that UV template into an image editor such as Photoshop
07:42
in order to create the button and screen graphics based upon the template.
07:46
If you do work in a resolution independent program,
07:50
which deals with vector images such as illustrator,
07:53
you'll want to interpret this P and G file
07:56
as having a pixels per inch of 600
07:59
and you don't want to resample the pixels.
08:02
OK.
08:02
So once again,
08:03
we're not going to go through that whole process in
08:05
Photoshop and illustrator or any other image editing program.
08:08
We're just going to skip forward to the stage
08:10
at which that image has been already created.
08:13
But that's how to save out a UV template
08:16
in preparation for creating texture maps.
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