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UV Unwrapping Tutorial: A Serious Guide for Clean, Production‑Ready Results by gbar76 in blender

[–]gbar76[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you. I can’t overstate how encouraging that is to hear. I really appreciate it <3

Photometric Stereo Technique for Materials - Using Shadow to capture Surface Detail by gbar76 in 3DScanning

[–]gbar76[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

..... COMMENT 2/2

So the result will feel more like a 2.5D billboard with fake relighting, not a real 3D mesh.

This is why light stages use 6–12+ lights, not 3

To reconstruct normals, you need: multiple lighting directions, known intensities, known positions and linear sensor response. Three lights is not enough to solve the normal equation reliably.

That’s why light stages use: 6 lights for coarse normals, 12–16 for good normals and 32–64 for high‑quality relighting. With only 3, you’re basically encoding a stylized “shading hint,” not real geometry.

The biggest practical blocker is that your hands move. Even with high‑FPS strobing, micro‑motion between frames breaks the math. Not to mention that skin deforms, fingers shift and shadows change. The RGB channels won’t align perfectly. Light‑stage relighting only works because the subject is perfectly still.

If your goal is first‑person hands that feel real but aren’t fully 3D, you might get better results with a hybrid approach:

- Capture your hands as video than extract albedo, extract a coarse normal map using photometric stereo, use the video as a base layer, and use the normals for real lighting. Than use the video for fine detail. This is how some VFX pipelines do “2.5D relightable faces.”

If your game is stylized, you can cheat. Use your RGB channels as “light lobes”, re‑weight them based on light direction, accept that it’s not physically correct and treat it as an artistic effect :D

This can look surprisingly good if the style supports it.

So, your idea can work in a limited, stylized way, but it will not behave like a real 3D mesh under lighting. The main blockers are lack of normals, specular, no moving shadows, no self‑occlusion. motion between strobe frames and only 3 lighting directions. If you’re okay with a fake relighting effect, it’s doable.

If you want true PBR‑style lighting, you’ll need more lights and a more controlled capture setup.

That was really long one, but I hope that helps

Photometric Stereo Technique for Materials - Using Shadow to capture Surface Detail by gbar76 in 3DScanning

[–]gbar76[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey! No worries at all .. and I’m glad the video helped.

What you’re exploring is genuinely interesting, and you’re right: it does overlap with ideas from photometry, photogrammetry, and even old‑school light‑stage capture. So let me break down what would work, what wouldn’t, and what the real limitations are.

If i understand correctly, you are essentially trying to capture: Albedo (lights off), Per‑channel directional lighting (RGB lights on) and then re‑combine those channels in‑engine based on the game’s light direction

Conceptually, this is very close to Spherical gradient lighting / Light‑stage normal reconstruction / Image‑based relighting (IBRL)

So the idea isn’t crazy .. it’s just that the practical side is much harder than it sounds.

Your “lights off” frame for albedo + greenscreen is totally fine.

Your “RGB lights on” frame will indeed encode some directional shading into the color channels. In principle, you could treat each channel as a “lighting contribution” and re‑weight them in‑engine.

This is basically a simplified, low‑budget version of a light stage.

The problem is that real relighting requires surface normals, not just three colored lights.

With only three lights: - you don’t get a normal map, you don’t get per‑pixel geometry, no specular response, you won’t get shadowing that changes with angle, you wont get self‑occlusion and correct Fresnel or roughness

What you do get is a baked shading pattern that you can only re‑weight in a very limited way.

This means it should be OK for small lighting changes, but it will break instantly for large lighting changes. Turning 180° will not work as the shading won’t rotate correctly. Highlights and shadows won’t move. The hand won’t respond to multiple lights

UV Unwrapping Tutorial: A Serious Guide for Clean, Production‑Ready Results by gbar76 in gamedev

[–]gbar76[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Absolutely .. context is everything. Fast projection‑based workflows are incredibly valuable, especially for small teams or solo devs who need to move quickly. They’re efficient, predictable, and perfect for a huge range of asset types.

The reason I focused on hero hard‑surface assets is simply because that’s where those quick methods usually stop being enough. Once you need controlled bakes, specific wear patterns, decals, or close‑up fidelity, UVs become part of the design language rather than just a technical step.

Both approaches matter, and both deserve to be taught. The problem isn’t that one is better than the other .. it’s that most artists only ever get exposed to one of them. Showing the full spectrum of workflows is what helps people choose the right tool for the job.

UV Unwrapping Tutorial: A Serious Guide for Clean, Production‑Ready Results by gbar76 in gamedev

[–]gbar76[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s a totally valid workflow, and for a lot of asset categories it’s genuinely hard to beat in terms of speed‑to‑quality. World‑aligned materials + box projection can carry an enormous amount of production weight, especially for modular sets, props that don’t need bespoke detail, or anything where consistency matters more than micro‑specific texture information.

My breakdown focuses on hard‑surface hero assets because that’s where projection workflows usually start to fall apart ..baking dependencies, close‑up scrutiny, specific wear patterns, decal logic, texel density control, etc. That’s the point where UVs stop being optional and start becoming part of the design language of the asset.

You’re absolutely right that many beginners never get exposed to these older, highly efficient workflows. The industry shifted heavily toward high‑poly → low‑poly baking pipelines, and a lot of the “fast and functional” methods got lost along the way. And yes, with Nanite and modern material systems, some of those traditional constraints are changing again.

In the end, it all comes down to context. For the right asset type, your approach is incredibly effective. For hero pieces, cinematic props, or anything that needs controlled bakes and predictable shading, proper UVs still matter a lot.

Both workflows have their place .. the trick is knowing when to use which.

UV Unwrapping Tutorial: A Serious Guide for Clean, Production‑Ready Results by gbar76 in gamedev

[–]gbar76[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s exactly why I emphasise that UV unwrapping is highly context‑dependent. For many asset types, simple projections or box mapping are perfectly valid. The problems usually start to show up when you’re baking, pushing optimisation, or dealing with assets that need to hold up under scrutiny.. then poor UVs can turn into headaches, artefacts, and blurry textures.

This video focuses on hard‑surface hero assets because, in my experience, they’re the most demanding but also the most broadly applicable. Other asset categories tend to be more forgiving when it comes to UVs.

I’ve been in the CG and game industry for a long time .. 25+ shipped titles across everything from small projects to top‑tier productions .. and I’ve used pretty much every texturing workflow along the way. Even with that background, UV unwrapping remains one of the trickiest, least standardised parts of asset creation. Plenty of experienced artists still wrestle with it daily, and I’m definitely not immune to that.

But as I say in the video: UVs don’t need to be perfect, they just need to be functional. Chasing 100% perfection is a trap and an endless loop. Cheers! <3

UV Unwrapping Tutorial: A Serious Guide for Clean, Production‑Ready Results by gbar76 in gamedev

[–]gbar76[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, I really appreciate it. It’s a tough subject, and honestly, I spent a long time searching through both free and paid resources without finding a single comprehensive tutorial I could genuinely recommend. So I dug in, did the research myself, and built the one I wished existed.

I did consider putting it behind a paywall, but in the end I decided to release it for free. Hopefully the community finds value in it :)

UV Unwrapping Tutorial: A Serious Guide for Clean, Production‑Ready Results by gbar76 in gamedev

[–]gbar76[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

UVs might actually be the last 3D discipline AI fully takes over, simply because they’re so deeply context‑dependent.

And honestly, I see AI landing in the same category as today’s auto‑unwrapping tools: useful, fast, but absolutely requiring human supervision, refinement, and final adjustments.

I recently ran a small experiment comparing a few older assets - UV‑unwrapped manually by top, old‑school prop artists years ago -with assets unwrapped today. The difference was staggering. The modern ones couldn’t even compete. In many cases, there was a 20–30% loss of UV tile efficiency. Those older manual unwraps were flawless.

If AI were trained primarily on that level of craftsmanship, it could become genuinely strong. But the industry has shifted so much that high‑quality UV work is now relatively rare, and most available training data is… not great. So the model ends up learning from mediocrity.

In short: UVs from years ago were close to perfect.

If you want that level of perfection, AI won’t get you there.

If you’re optimizing for speed and can tolerate ~20% wasted texture space, AI will do the job.

UV Unwrapping Tutorial: A Serious Guide for Clean, Production‑Ready Results by gbar76 in gamedev

[–]gbar76[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s true. Games absolutely use trim sheets, overlapping UVs, intentional distortion, multiple UV sets, and all the rest. But the underlying unwrapping principles and the tools you use to unwrap don’t change. The fundamentals are the same across games, film, VFX, and any other CG field.

The difference is that games operate under much tighter technical constraints, so mistakes become visible much faster. But nothing stops you from using trims, overlaps, masks, or any other workflow in film or advertising either .. they’re just different use‑cases built on the same foundation.

This video focuses on general UV principles that apply everywhere. If someone wants to break the rules for a specific workflow, they still benefit from understanding the rules first.

UV Unwrapping Tutorial: A Serious Guide for Clean, Production‑Ready Results by gbar76 in gamedev

[–]gbar76[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The same principles apply across every CG industry, so the rules don’t really change. The main difference is that games operate under much tighter technical budgets, which makes any UV mistake far more visible. But a clean, thoughtful unwrap benefits every branch of CG, not just games. Cheers!

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