Things to Consider before Unwrapping

It’s important to note that not all the objects you’ve created for Jim’s character have the same properties, and you need to make some decisions before jumping into UV mapping. The list that follows describes some things you need to keep in mind.

Meshes that don’t need UVs: If an object is only supposed to look like a plane material with no changes in its surface (which is not usual in realistic models, but can happen in simple models for animations), you won’t need to unwrap it. Unwrapping defines how an image will be projected onto the surface of a model, but if you just need a color, a material with no texture will do. For example, this will be the case for Jim’s hair.

Meshes with modifiers: Some of the meshes that comprise your character may have modifiers applied. When a mesh is using modifiers that change its geometry, they will affect the UVs as well. Let’s take Jim’s badges as an example. They are made with a Solidify modifier that adds thickness to the model: the UVs will only be available for the original geometry, so the polygons generated by the modifier won’t be able to display a texture you might want. In the case of the Solidify modifier, the “thickness” polygons will display the color of the texture’s borders in the front, and the back side will display the same as the front side (which shouldn’t matter to you in this case, because the back side is hidden). In these situations, you must decide if you’ll get the correct result unwrapping without applying the modifiers, or if you need to apply the modifiers and then unwrap all the geometry. It depends on the amount of detail you’re looking for or where you need to display the textures accurately.

Mirrored meshes: Mirror is a modifier, but it’s especially important when it’s used with UVs. If you do the UVs and you’re using a Mirror modifier, the mirrored geometry will use the same UVs as the side you’ve unwrapped. Sometimes, you may want to have asymmetric textures for an object, and in those cases, you should apply the Mirror modifier before unwrapping. In other cases, though, a mirrored texture could work nicely and that means two things: you only need to unwrap one half of the object and you’ll also need less space in the image to texture that object. In yet another case, you might need an asymmetric shape, but the texture could be symmetric; in this situation, you could work with a symmetric shape, perform the unwrap operation, and finally apply the Mirror modifier, making any adjustments to the shape afterward. This way, you’d have mirrored UVs but an asymmetric shape (only the shape would be able to change; the topology should be the same on both sides of the mesh). The following examples in the next sections, using Jim’s face and jacket, will help you to understand this option better.