Asset Creation: Maya Scenography UV Mapping - Creating Games with Unity and Maya - page 41

Step 7: Choose Checkerboard.psd to define the color attribute. After
following the previous step, the Attribute Editor will change to display a
file1 node with an Image Name input field. Click the folder icon next to
that input field, and you should be taken to the sourceimages folder of the
project. Double-click Checkerboard.psd.
Step 8: View the scene in Textured mode. Do this by pressing 6 on the
keyboard. This will show the scene with any applied textures and should
yield a strange result as seen in Figure 3.4 .

Warnings and Pitfalls
If the folder next to
the Image Name input
field is clicked and you
are not taken to the
sourceimages folder
of your project, stop.
It means the project
is not set right, and if
you start maneuvering
through file trees to find
the right file, you could
break the project on any
other machine than the
machine you are working
on. If you find yourself
in another location than
what you anticipate,
stop, save the file, and go
back and set your project
(File>Set Project).

Figure 3.4 Base checkerboard texture applied and the strange current default UV map.

Why?
So what are we seeing here? Think way back to when we first began building
this column; the shape we began with was a cube. The parts of the column
that have texture are the original faces of that cube. The polygons we extruded
off of that shape are gray; they have no UV coordinates, and thus have no
location for the texture to be “pinned” to. Further, the texture that is applied to
the main shaft of the column is stretched and not efficiently organized.

Mapping Beginning with Automatic Mapping

Why?
The first way we are going to look at UV mapping is to start with
Automatic Mapping . Generally, anytime software does something