Prepping for Zombie Details with UV Unwrapping - Game Character Creation with Blender and Unity - page 88

The Uses of UV Layouts
As stated in previous chapters, game artists do not have the luxuries that other 3D art-
ists have when it comes to asset detail: we need to work in much lower polygon counts
than our counterparts in other industries. Due to these limitations, textures are some
of the most important tools at the disposal of game artists. As shown in Figure 4.1 and
Figure 4.2, textures can completely transform the look of in-game models. In this topic,
you will work specifically with two different types of texture maps: color maps and nor-
mal maps. As you learned in Chapter 1, “Basic Game Art Concepts,” color maps provide
the primary aesthetic detail of a 3D object. They are the maps that resemble objects like
bricks, wood floors, wallpapers, and so forth, giving the surface color and visual inter-
est. Normal maps, on the other hand, tweak the way that the surface of a model is viewed
to give the impression that drawn details are actual geometry. While many textures can
be applied as tile sets—smaller images that are repeated over a surface—some have to be
custom-fit to the polygons of a mesh. This is where UV unwrapping comes in.

Figure 4.1
Work-in-progress
game environment
with no texturing

Figure 4.2
Work-in-progress
game environment
with color maps and
baked lighting