Free Cinema 4D UV Mapping tutorial for 3D animation students.
In this Cinema 4D UV Mapping tutorial I want to show you how to texture an object and handle UV maps in Cinema 4D. At first we need to know what is UV map and how it works.
What is UV Map?
How UV Map works to texture a 3D Model?
Texturing with UV Mapping technique is the name of a process to project a texture map onto a 3D object. Actually UVs are two-dimensional texture coordinates that reside with the vertex component information for polygon meshes. UVs needed to control a two-dimensional texture coordinate system, called UV texture space.
Without the UV coordinate system how can we place a texture image generated in Photoshop onto a 3D surface without any unnatural texturing deformation? UVs are essential because they provide the connection between the surface mesh and how the image texture gets mapped onto the surface mesh. That is, UVs act as marker points that control which points (pixels) on the texture map correspond to which points (vertices) on the surface mesh.
A UV map can either be created automatically by the software application or manually or both. You have to know that any texture map wrapped with the UV coordinate system is applied per polygon face, not per vertex. So, a vertex can have different UV coordinates in each of its neighboring face triangles. That is why, adjacent UV face triangles of a texture can be cut apart and position on different areas of a texture image.
Texturing with UV coordinates requires only three steps, (i) Creation of a texture (ii) implementing texture image onto a 3D object and (iii) unwrap the mesh and confirm the position of every face on the right point on the texture image using UV coordinate system. Isn’t it an easy procedure?
In this C4D UV Mapping tutorial I want to texture a sphere object with earth texture map.
Step 1
So, create a sphere by choosing from the menu bar Objects > Primitive > Sphere.
Step 2
Now, go to the Material Manager and choose from its menu bar File > New Material. A material will appear in this Material Manager. To assign this material to this sphere object just drag-and-drop on this sphere object (from the Material Manager to the 3D object in the view-port).
Step 3
Now, double click on this material to open the Material Editor Window. The Material Editor Window will appear in a separate window. Here, go to the color attribute section under this Material editor and press the open texture image button (…). Then browse your texture map image which you have already collected from the internet or create your own using any image editor like Adobe Photoshop. Here I use this earth texture image which I have already created using Adobe Photoshop to demonstrate C4D UV Mapping.
Step 4
Now, we have to place this texture image as we need. So go to the object manager and select the Material tag to see the texture attributes as shown in the above image under the attribute section. Go to the Projection section in the Attribute manager and choose Spherical from the projection drop down list. By default the UVW Mapping projection applied to the primitive when it has been created in the Cinema 4D view-port. In this case, this sphere object has already textured perfectly under the UVW Mapping projection. But in case of complex character you need to apply the perfect Projection system and position the UVs perfectly to set it using BodyPaint UV edit menu.
Step 5
Now press the Render Active View button to see the result. Here you can see I have created lights and floor object, I will discuss about light and environment in another tutorial in rendering part. I think this C4D UV Mapping tutorial will help you know about the following topics.
- How to create material in cinema 4D
- How to apply texture in cinema 4D
- How to assign texture map in cinema 4D material editor
- How to set the UV Projection in Cinema 4D
If you find this Cinema 4D UV Mapping tutorial useful then follow other Cinema 4D Texturing tutorial along with several Cinema 4D Tutorials.