Katana – Page 5

Step 34

  1. Begin by switching to Edge mode. We are going to take advantage of Blender’s UV unwrap tool to greatly reduce the headache of UV mapping.
  2. We need to select all the edges we want to be UV seams. With a manufactured item like this its pretty easy to hide seams. First select down the cutting edge of the blade and around where it connects to the tsuba.

Step 35

  1. From here we are going to continue to hide the seams along the front, as the front is the side least seen by a player (and this is intended as a game object). Continue to select down the front of the object except for the tsuba.
  2. The tsuba’s only seam is around the lowest edge of the outer lip.
  3. Also don’t forget to go around the bottom of the tsuba and the top of the pommel.

Step 36

  1. Mark Seam (Ctrl-E), which will tell Blender where we want our seems to go.
  2. Now select all the faces of the object.
  3. With all the faces selected choose Mesh->UV Unwrap->Unwrap.
  4. Switch to the UV Editing window.

Step 37

  1. Texture map space is precious. As you can see, large amounts of UV space are wasted in this setup. Now we go and manually set things up to work a little better. Drag Select the two parts of the tsuba.
  2. Translate them over (G) and Scale them up (S). The tsuba is going to get a lot of love in texturing, as the tsuba is the most decorated part of a real katana.
  3. Using the Select Linked (Ctrl-L) tool, Rotate each piece so that it has a more manageable orientation.

Step 38

  1. Do the same for the handle and the pommel.
  2. Export the UVs as KatanaUV.svg.
  3. Save.

Source Files