Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Exploring the UV Texture Editor
When any of Maya's primitives are created, these primitives include a
default UV layout. For instance, go to Create>Polygon Primitives>Cube.
With this cube selected, choose Window>UV Texture Editor (
Figure 3.2
). In
the UV Texture Editor, the six-sided cube will appear unfolded. All the faces
are laid out flat in the top (1,1) quadrant of the UV Texture Editor space. By
default, the background here will be a medium gray color; this is actually
the texture that is applied to the cube. Within the UV Texture Editor, right-
click and hold, and a hotbox will be presented that allows for choosing
which type of component to select. The regular Edge, Vertex, and Face are
presented, as well as UV.
After choosing a component type from the hotbox, these components are
now selectable within the UV Texture Editor. At first blush it seems that the
only difference between Vertex and UV is the color of the component when
it is selected (vertices highlight yellow and UVs always highlight green).
This is because Maya's primitives have their UVs located at the vertices
of the form. However, don't confuse the two. Vertices and UVs are one-
dimensional—they have no geometry of their own—but they serve much
different functions.
In fact, once faces or edges are extruded new vertices will always be created
along with the faces created (there cannot be faces without the vertices);
however, these new vertices will not necessarily have new UVs attached to
them. Further, although UVs are visible in 3D space (i.e., the View panels),
they can only be altered—moved, rotated or scaled—in 2D space, within the
UV Texture Editor.
This transition from 2D texture space to 3D space is often a hard thing to
visualize and even harder to explain. However, it becomes much easier
to comprehend once it is seen in action. Because of this we won't spend
too much time pounding on the theory further. Let's start seeing it in
action.
Figure 3.2
UV Texture Editor and the
UV layout of a cube primitive.
