Prepping for Zombie Details with UV Unwrapping - Game Character Creation with Blender and Unity - page 103

The star of these tools is the Live Unwrap mode, where Blender unwraps your mesh as
you mark seams rather than after you've gone through the unwrapping process. This tool
provides real-time feedback that can save valuable time. The method for activating the
mode is as follows:
1. In the UV/Image Editor, go to the UVs menu on the Header bar and select the Live
Unwrap check box.
2. Also in the UV/Image Editor is a button for syncing up the selections between the
3D View and UV/Image Editors (shown in Figure 4.32). Select this button. Not
only is it useful in situations where Live
Unwrap is used, but it can also help you
understand which polygons are which
when you are working with meshes that
feature a lot of similar forms on different
UV islands.
3. In the 3D View editor's Toolshelf (press the T
key), scroll down to activate the Live Unwrap
function (Figure 4.33).
4. Mark some random seams on your zombie and
watch as your UVs automatically update in the
UV/Image Editor.
5. To make the process even quicker, above the
Live Unwrap option in the 3D View editor's
Toolshelf is a drop-down that allows you to choose from different Edge modes. One
of them is Tag Seam, which will automatically mark selected edges if you use the
Ctrl+RMB method of selecting edges.
Now you have an unwrapped model. In the typical texturing process, you will go right
to the color mapping phase. However, you'll first sculpt your model to add high-poly
details to your low-poly mesh. From there, you'll use the resulting normal maps as
a guide for the digital painting that will become the zombie's color maps.

Figure 4.32
The UV/3D sync
button

Figure 4.33
The Live Unwrap
option in the 3D
Viewport Editor's
Toolshelf