Casually Hardcore devlog

We’ll be stuck with UVs for another 10 years…

May 17th, 2008

After some back and forth with my modelers about PolyCube maps and how that influences their workflow, I’ve resigned myself to that fact that modelers will be using UVs (even though they hate them) for another 10 years for a couple of reasons:

1. UV mapping tools are now fantastic + cheap + widely available. See UVlayout, Unwrap3D, Unfold3D, built-in tools in Maya, 3DS Max, XSI, etc.
2. Smart UV mapping saves tons of texture space by intelligently mirroring / folding UVs – although this causes major problems with normal + light mapping where mirroring UV will cause normals to be flipped.
3. All modelers are taught how to UV map and have developed extensive UV mapping experience by now.

UV mappers / texture artists are so efficient at using texture space with UVs and understand all the normal + lighting mapping problems now. I doubt they’d be willing to move to a 3D projection paint + PolyCube methodology until we have more texture memory and Zbrush (or apps like it) becomes the standard modeling tool.

Entry Filed under: Game Development