UV-ing a cube

right

i am starting from the bottom so why not start with the most simple shape? a cube!

so i create a cube in maya



next i use automatic mapping, i do this because it maps it from 6 sides, my cube has 6 sides so makes sense.

i then open my UV texture editor window and it looks like this.



not much to map here, due to the simple shape when i created the UVs the work was done for me.
i decided to play around with it and added a bump map of some wood, i did this because at a later date i will be uv mapping and texturing a bench for my other unit so thought this might be good practice. i got a 2d wood image of google (when i do it for the bench i will be creating my own texture).



obviously because i only used one image, the markings repeat on each side of the cube, ignore that and look at the nice bump mapping :)




bump mapping is essentially taking a 2D image and making the darker and lighter parts of the image react to the light placed in your scene. it gives the effect of 3D.

there wasnt much i found difficult in this test, i think maybe i shouldn't have wasted my time... oh well got to start somewhere i suppose.
the main problem i discovered was that the texture image i used was slightly wonky, this made some of the lines in the panels of wood not match up on the edges quite right.
this can be solved by taking and editing my own texture images.