Creating and Editing Texture Coordinates (UVs) - An Introduction to Computer Graphics for Artists - page 175

Fig. 10.41 The UVs for polygons a and b intersect in area c . The pixels covered by area c will be
the same for both polygons

unpaintable in the area covered by the overlapped UVs. This is because the artist
cannot paint one of the overlapped sections without also painting the other.
T o fi x this, the UVs must be edited. It isn't diffi cult to fi x for the modeler, but can
be extremely irritating to the texture artist if it isn't noticed right away. The reason
is that if the UVs must be edited, it may affect other texture work the artist has
already done. This particular error is associated with poor teamwork skills and lack
of professionalism.

10.6.6 UV Resolution

Just as texture maps have a resolution in pixels, texture coordinates have a resolution
related to the surface area of objects assigned to them and the amount of distortion.
A small surface area corresponds to a high resolution UV layout (Fig. 10.42 ). A large
surface area corresponds to a low resolution UV layout. The difference between
these two levels of resolution is that the high resolution solution will require
more maps than the low resolution solution, regardless of the resolution of the maps
themselves. High levels of distortion also lower the resolution of the layout because
distortion is typifi ed by unused pixels.

10.6.7 Conclusion

Packing is where artists can lose most of what they have gained through clever
projection and editing. Take care to understand the available space and how your
objects can best be made to fi t into it and your texture map will be higher resolution
without having to increase the pixel count. The more space you fi ll, the more pixels
will fi ll each polygon. The more pixels you have in your polygons, the higher the
resolution of your UV layout.