This tutorial explains two methods for the UV mapping of an object in Lightwave3D 7.0b. This tutorial should be compatible with all 6.X+ versions of Lightwave3D.

Lightwave offers a number of ways to generate UV maps, but often the computer-generated maps are difficult to interpret and paint on. As a result, this tutorial is intended to show you two processes for making more controlled UV maps. The concepts provided here are a combination of my personal experience and practices I've learned from others, in particular from Aristo Menis's tutorial "Nothing Compares 2 UV" from the site www.menithings.com and the CroTeams's tutorial on UV mapping in the Serious Sam SDK.

The goal of this tutorial is to demonstrate the creation of a UV Texture map for a character model for the Serious Sam engine by CroTeam, but the ideas provided can easily be adapted for any UV mapping project. Remember, this is an approach I use, but it is not the only way to do it. Experiment and find what works best for you.

1. Load your object into Modeler. The first step is to create a surface for each plane (X,Y,Z) and area of the object. This is part of the process described in the texturing section of the Serious SDK. In this image, you can see I have colored each surface differently so they are easy to distinguish when the placement map is exported for the "Serious Modeler".

2. As you can see, the sides of the legs are on one surface, the front another, the inside leg another, and the leg-back surface is unseen. You could also use one surface and later use "cylindrical type" when creating the UV texture, but that's not what we're going to do here. So these 3 surfaces define the 4 basic planes of the legs. Above the legs are 2 surfaces, torso front and torso back, and the feet are made up of 2 planes: inside and outside. These last 2 areas only have 2 planes since they are flatter then the legs, and do not need the extra planes to flatten the areas for the UV texture.

3. Lightwave dynamically updates UV data as mesh data is updated. This is a great feature in Lightwave. What this allows us to do is UV map half the object and then mirror it later. While this is great for low-resolution characters, I do not usually use this with high-resolution characters since it makes things overly symmetrical.

Select the identical parts from half the object and delete them, thus leaving you half the object. In this object, we have 2 polygons that crossover both halves of the model. These will be deselected so they will not be deleted. Later, when we mirror the object, we will select all polygons but these when we duplicate the existing half to make the object whole again.

4. Save this object as "player1.lwo" and "player2.lwo".

Now we deviate with 2 possible directions. One is making a new image map, the other is to use an existing image. If you are making a new image map, your best approach is to use a positioning image to make sure your map will wrap smoothly around your model. CroTeam has recommended using a checkerboard image to accomplish this. In your favorite image editor, create a new image 1024x1024 and draw a 2-color checkerboard of 16-pixel squares or download the one here. The checkerboard image is used as a temporary image for setting up the UV map, and is then replaced with the final image.

The first approach is a quick version using Lightwave's mapping tools to generate our map, then the checkerboard image will be used to cleanup the UV placement. The second approach will focus on more extensive control over UV placement and allow for fine detail manipulation. For this approach, we will use an existing image map (from CroTeam's game Serious Sam) and we will mold our UV map to work with this image map.

1. We will now create a new UV map for our object, then use Lightwave's UV Map tools to create the UV data for the map. This method will allow for the quick generation of UV data that we will then adjust once the map is generated.

2. Load the "player1.lwo" object. Now with all the symmetrical polygons deleted, select all points and "unweld" them.

3. Now is a good time to do a "save as" to back up your work so far.

4. Select the surfaces for the front, outside and back of the leg. We are not going to include the inside leg surface because this will cause problems for the model in the Serious Sam engine, which will not accept a single point having 2 UV coordinates. Select the 3 surfaces that make up the outside area of the leg using the select by surface tool in the statistics panel.

5. Now create a "Cylindrical" UV map for the main part of the leg. We will use this same map for all our UV data, so only one image will be used to map the entire lower body.

6. Now we have our first UV data for our UV map. To see the UV data, switch the bottom right view to "UV Texture" mode. Move this data out of the UV coordinate area so the next part we generate does not overlap the data we just created.

7. Now we are going to add the UV coordinates for the polygons that make up the inside of the leg to the "player" UV map. Deselect any currently selected polygons and select the surface for the inside of the leg in the statistics panel. Choose "create new UV texture map", then select the existing "player" UV map and create a "planar" type map on the X-axis for the selected surface. Last, move the UV-coordinates out of the active UV area.

8. Now we are going to add the UV coordinates for the polygons that make up the back of the torso to the "player" UV map. Deselect any currently selected polygons and select the surface for the back of the torso in the "statistics" panel. Choose "create new UV texture map", then select the existing "player" UV map and create a "planar" type map on the Z-axis for the selected surface. Last, move the UV-coordinates out of the active UV area.

9. Now we are going to add the UV coordinates for the polygons that make up the front of the torso to the "player" UV map. Deselect any currently selected polygons and select the surface for the front of the torso in the "statistics" panel. Choose create "new UV texture map", then select the existing "player" UV map and create a "planar" type map on the Z-axis for the selected surface. Last move the UV-coordinates out of the active UV area.

The process we used for the leg and torso surfaces will now be repeated for the rest of the remaining surfaces. For all the remaining surfaces, we will use planar maps but you could mix any map types that best suits your model in this process.

10. Create the UV coordinates for the "bodyTop" surface. This surface is not very important since the torso will almost always obscure it; it just needs to blend in with the torso texture. Create a planar map on the Y-axis as you did with the previous surfaces and add it to the "player" UV Texture. Then move the coordinates out of the UV grid.

11. Create the UV coordinates for the "LegCuff" surface. This surface is not very important since it will be raised up under the pant leg; it just needs to blend in with the leg texture. Create a planar map on the Y-axis as you did with the previous surfaces and add it to the "player" UV Texture. Then move the coordinates out of the UV grid.

12. Create the UV coordinates for the "shoeInside" surface. This surface is the inside of the shoe. Create a planar map on the X-axis as you did with the previous surfaces, and add it to the "player" UV Texture. Then move the coordinates out of the UV grid.

13. Create the UV coordinates for the "shoeSides" surface. This surface is the outside of the shoe and the outside of the sole around the inside and outside. Create a planar map on the X-axis as you did with the previous surfaces and add it to the "player" UV Texture. Then move the coordinates out of the UV grid.

14. Create the UV coordinates for the "Sole" surface. This surface is the sole of the shoe. Create a planar map on the Y-axis as you did with the previous surfaces and add it to the "player" UV Texture. Then move the coordinates out of the UV grid.

15. Now arrange your UV coordinate pieces to cover a roughly square area and then size them all down together to fit in the UV Grid.

16. Now is a good time to save your work.

17. Open the "Surface Editor" and select all the surfaces. Add a texture to the "color" channel. Load the grid image for the "player" UV Texture. You can now see the red grid texture wrapped on to your model. Some parts are a little stretched so we will load the image into the "UV Texture" view and adjust the positioning of some of the coordinates.

18. Now load the Red Grid as the background for the "UV Texture" view. The image is a little bright so lower the brightness and contrast in order to see the UV data a little more clearly.

19. Notice how the image map is getting stretched and pinched in some areas. The checkerboard pattern helps us to easily identify these areas and clean up the UV coordinates so our final image map will wrap smoothly over our object. Since I know that the torso and shoe sections of the final map will be separate from the legs, I'm not going to focus on getting the grid to be consistent in size and edge connection across the entire object, but I will make sure for the 3 basic areas that the map lines up well and displays with a consistent size.

20. The inside of the leg looks very different from the outside. The grid pattern is much smaller for the inside. Since the inside of the leg is not going to be all that visible in the game engine, it's not overly important. Select all the polygons that make up the inside leg, and then using the size tool and move tool adjust the UV coordinates to better match the outside leg.

21. The outside leg has some stretching and pinching in some areas, so using the move tool adjust the UV coordinate points to smooth out the texture.

22. Since the torso is a separate section as mentioned above, we will focus on smoothing the UV coordinates for just the front and back of the torso and not make a consistent connection with the grid of the leg section. The front torso only needs a little change to the bottom right point. The back needs a little more work to straighten out its lines, then move all the points to better line up with the front torso.

23. The shoe needs a little more work then other areas. We have broken the shoe into 2 parts. The main part is the outside area, the section containing the laces and the entire area that connects the shoe to the sole. The other part of the foot is only the inside ankle. In some cases, it may be easier or more desirable to separate these parts further, especially the top of the shoe where the laces are, but for this instance we will be served fine with this simple distribution of UV coordinates.

Adjust the points to smooth the grid around the outside shoe surface. Pay special attention to getting a good transition on the top laces area. Now adjust the inside shoe surface to match the relative grid size of the outside shoe. Once the grid wraps consistently around both parts, make any final tweaks to the coordinates. As with the inside leg, the inside shoe surface is not going to be a prominent visible area of the character so perfection is not necessary.

24. Select all polygons using the "Lasso" tool. As when we deleted half this model before, deselect the 2 polygons that stretch across both halves of the model so they will not be mirrored. Now "mirror" the object. Now you have your whole object and the entire thing is image-mapped. Save this object.

25. Finally Merge points "m", found in the Reduce section of the left menu under the "Construct" tab. You now have a UV mapped object ready to use.

1. This approach will focus on more extensive control over UV placement and allow for fine detail manipulation. For this path, we will use an existing image map (from CroTeam's game Serious Sam) and we will mold our UV map to work with this image map.

1. Load the "player2.lwo" object. Now with all the symmetrical polygons deleted, select all points and "unweld" them.

2. Now is a good time to do a "save as" to back up your work so far.

3. We are now going to create a morph map so we can use "EndoMorph's" to morph between the current version and the flat version of the object we are about to make. Once we have a flat version of the object, we will UV map, then morph the object back to its original 3 dimensional form. Create a new "Morph Map" and name it "Flat". Aristo Menis' tutorial first introduced me to the idea of using morph maps to do this and he deserves the credit for it. If it weren't for Menis, I'd still be doing this the old "Saturn's Ring Morph" way, a more time consuming process of morphing separate objects in layout.

4. We are now going to position the points for this morph. Since all the points are unwelded we will select polygon groups by surface and position them on the Z-axis so we can create a planar UV map on the Z-axis. To select surfaces by name, use the statistics panel. Do not directly select individual points or polygons. Since the object is unwelded, it is very easy to mess up the object and have to revert back to the saved version. Select the front surface for the leg and move it to the right of the model.

5. Repeat step 4 for the torso front surface and any other front facing surfaces.

6. For the side and back facing surfaces, we will rotate then so they face forward, then move them into position alongside the front surfaces.

7. Repeat step 6 for the remaining surfaces.

8. Now load your image into the background of the bottom right view, or your preferred quadrant. Set the image resolution to 1024 so you can see the details more clearly. I sized mine up to 2 feet so it was little closer in scale with my current layout of pieces.

9. You should now have your surfaces flattened out in the front view. Now switch back to the base Morph map.

Here is your object whole. If you switch back to the "flat" morph map, you will see that Modeler has retained all the changes we have made.

10. Now is a good time to save your work.

11. Now size down the polygons in the bottom right view to fit over the image map. Once the basic size is more relational, move the parts over the area of the map that will be mapped onto them. This does not need to be perfect, as detail adjustments will be made directly to the UV Map.

12. Create a new UV Texture map of the type "Planar" on the "Z" axis. Name this image map "player"

13. In the view control for the bottom right view, switch to "UV Texture". Now you can see the UV Map.

Switch to point selection mode and use the move tool to better position the UV coordinates over your image map. Do not manipulate individual polygons in this step, if you do need to make edits, select the entire surface. Generally it is best to only manipulate points at this phase.

14. In the Surface Panel, select all the surfaces and add the image map to the color channel of the surfaces.

15. Switch back to the "base" morph map and see your progress. If any part of the image mapping of the "base" version looks stretched or mis-aligned, go back to step 13 and continue tweaking the UV Map.

16. Change to the "base" morph map if you had changed back to "Flat", then select all polygons using the "Lasso" tool. As when we deleted half this model before, deselect the 2 polygons that stretch across both halves of the model so they will not be mirrored. Now "Mirror" the object. Now you have your whole object and the entire thing is image-mapped. Save this object.

17. Start layout and load the object you just saved. Now use "Save Transformed Object". Save this under a different name and close Layout.

18. Load the new object into Modeler and Merge Points "m", in the Reduce section of the left menu under the "Construct" tab. You now have a UV mapped object ready to use.