UV unwrapping is a crucial bridge between 3D modeling and texturing. Without well-unwrapped UVs, even the most detailed models will suffer from poor textures, stretching, and mismatches. This day focuses on advancing your UV skills by teaching multiple unwrapping techniques and shell organization best practices.

You’ll start by revisiting the basics—what UVs are, how they work, and why they matter. From there, we dive into automatic mapping, planar projection, cylindrical and spherical projections, and more complex techniques like camera-based and manual unwrapping. You’ll learn how to choose the right method based on the object type—flat surfaces vs. organic forms, symmetrical objects, or mechanical parts.

Efficient UV layout is another critical component. You’ll explore ways to organize UV shells using consistent scaling, minimal seams, and optimal packing to maximize texture resolution. A good UV layout results in better visual quality and less performance overhead when used in game engines like Unreal Engine.

We’ll also introduce core texturing theory: what maps like albedo (base color), roughness, metallic, ambient occlusion (AO), and normal maps are, and how they contribute to a material’s final look. For example, the roughness map determines how shiny or matte a surface is, and the normal map simulates fine surface details without adding extra geometry.

Hands-on sessions will allow you to unwrap a complex model, organize UV shells effectively, and visualize how these maps are interpreted inside Unreal Engine. Understanding this foundational pipeline is essential not just for realism, but also for optimization in real-time environments.