Learning Blender, 3rd Edition

8

Unwrapping and UVs in Blender

Unwrapping is a fundamental step in 3D design that comes before adding textures to a 3D model, and it creates UVs. Without UVs, the 3D software (Blender, in this case) wouldn’t be able to determine where in the model’s surface an image should be projected. UVs (the 2D counterparts of X, Y, and Z coordinates in 3D space) are the internal 2D positions of the vertices of a 3D mesh; they define how a 2D texture will be projected on the mesh’s surface. One way to think of the unwrapping process is to visualize a globe. Imagine taking the Earth’s surface and flattening it into a map. This process of converting a 3D shape to a 2D surface is referred to as unwrapping.

Unwrapping may look a little odd, and it’s a task ...