First of all, I will say that I am not a modeler by any means, and I don't understand the lingo used. I hear a lot of people of this forum talk about UVing a model. What does that mean? Is it like and ultraviolet light baking kind of thing, or is it something completely different than that? Also, why is UVing a model important to the final product? What's the difference between an object that has been UVed and one that hasn't? Sorry if this is kinda a stupid question, I just want to know what it means so that I can vaugly follow progress of certain mods and official vehicles and so on.
Ok, one more question then. Why does it take so long? Do you have to input the coordinates for each texture manually?
Just a bit of a fine art to get it all lined up and working real nice. Far from a straightforward process.
Ok, so I know SixSixSevenSeven, kinda stated what this is, I figured I could add a few pictures to the explanation since I had them laying around on my hard drive. UV mapping is basically the process of making the 3D mesh into a 2 dimensional plan so that you can easily add textures to the different parts. The object shown is a cab for a truck, and is modeled with tris, the first picture shows all of the object in 3d, while the second shows where they are mapped. Simple mapping doesn't really take a whole lot of time, but to achieve a decent, easily modifiable image can become difficult as the poly count increases. The object: Where they are mapped: Hope this might help a bit more.
