Maya UV Mapping Turtorial

Hello people of the Internet! Today I will be explaining the basics of UV mapping in the 3D modeling software Maya. UV mapping is used to make a texture fit inside a face. So if your texture is to small or to large you can use UV mapping to make that texture fit on a face. This tutorial is meant for people who are just beginning to use maya so there will not be many advanced concepts in this post. Now that the introduction is over we can start the tutorial.

1. Set Up

In this example I will be using a simple cube (left) for the object and the happy face as the texture (above). So I select a face on the cube and create a new lambert. Then, in the attribute editor I select the black and white box next to the word color and select file. From there I choose the happy face texture.


                    








                   
                            
                              2. Opening UV Editor

Now I have a cube with a texture on one of the faces. But the texture does not fit on the face. This is where we begin to use UV mapping. To open the UV editor I just selected the UV tab on the main menu and from there I just select UV editor. NOTE: The UV tab will only show up on the main menu if the menu is set to the modeling category. Now the UV should pop up as a separate tab (right).

3. Using the UV Editor
To use the UV Editor I select an edge and simply move it within the UV Editor screen until the texture lines up correctly with the face. The end result has the texture fitting on the face.

                                   

                                      Using UV Mapping we have created a very happy cube!