1. Understanding UV Unwrapping

Before applying textures, I needed to understand how a three-dimensional surface could be represented on a flat image.

A UV layout describes where each part of a model samples its texture. Seams act as cuts that allow the surface to open into separate pieces called UV islands. The position of these cuts affects how easily the surface unfolds and where texture discontinuities appear.

This exercise showed me why different shapes require different approaches. A flat wall, a cylinder, and a sphere cannot all be unwrapped effectively using the same projection.

2. Continuing the Interior Scene

The existing room and camera were retained from Exercise 5. The scene contained a central cube, a cylinder, several material-test spheres, and a ceiling light fixture.

The Earth texture remained on the sphere above the cube. A smaller sphere was added beside the cube and given a Moon texture. The space texture was applied across the walls, ceiling, and floor to create a consistent theme.

Keeping the same camera made it easier to compare the checker and textured versions from one viewpoint.

3. Choosing the Unwrapping Methods

The five methods were assigned according to the geometry of each object:

For the room, each face used an orthographic projection aligned with its normal—the equivalent of viewing that surface straight-on. This avoided projecting across corners where a surface would turn away from the view.

4. Unwrapping the Cube and Cylinder

Cube Projection suited the central pedestal because its six faces were flat. However, the initial projection produced stacked faces. These were separated before packing so that each face occupied its own space in the final atlas.

This was a useful reminder that choosing an appropriate projection does not automatically produce a finished UV layout.

For the cylinder, the side was projected around its upright axis. The top and bottom were treated separately as flat discs.

Separating the caps from the curved side followed the cylinder’s hard rim edges. It also made the layout easier to inspect because the side and caps could be judged independently.

5. Mapping the Spheres and Marking Seams

Sphere Projection was used for the spherical objects. This suited the Earth and Moon images because their rectangular maps were intended to wrap around a ball.

The main limitation was convergence at the poles. Similar to a world map, the texture becomes compressed as the surface approaches the top and bottom of the sphere. A finished texture can disguise this, but the checker makes it easier to see.

The matte sphere provided an example of Mark Seam + Unwrap. A longitude seam and two rings near the poles divided its surface into a larger body island and two polar caps. Angle Based Unwrap was then used to unfold those sections.

Comparing these approaches helped me understand that seam placement involves a trade-off: adding cuts can reduce distortion, but it also introduces more texture boundaries.

6. Checking Density and Packing the Layouts

A checker texture was applied to every mesh to inspect the UV mapping.

The checker helped identify two different issues:

• Distorted squares indicated stretching or compression.

• Different square sizes indicated uneven texel density.

The UV island areas were averaged before packing into a shared atlas. This produced consistent average texel density across the nine meshes. The islands were packed inside the 0–1 square with a small margin of 0.003.

The layouts were also checked for overlapping faces. After correcting the stacked cube-projection faces, the final atlas passed the overlap check.

The spherical objects still showed some local distortion near their poles. This remains a limitation of the result, even though their average texture density matched the other objects.

7. Applying and Packing the Textures

The textured version developed the space theme across the scene:

The original image-mapping UV layers were retained where needed to preserve the orientation of the Earth, Moon, and other images. A separate EX6 Packed layer provided the shared checker atlas.

All image resources were packed into the Blender files so the scene could be opened without locating separate texture files.

8. Preparing the Submission

Native Blender editor screenshots were captured to document the result:

• Nine individual UV Editor screenshots, one for each mesh.

• One screenshot showing the complete packed atlas.

• One checker viewport screenshot.

• One textured viewport screenshot.

All screenshots were saved as PNG files at 2880 × 1496 pixels, exceeding the required minimum of 1920 × 1080.

The submission also included the packed Blender scene and a checker version for inspection.

Texture Sources and Submission Comment

The space texture, spacetexture.jpg, and Moon texture, moon-texture.jpg, were downloaded from Freepik, rather than painted in Blender.

The supplied Earth image contains an iStock / xingmin07 watermark. The supplied HDRI file is named 085_hdrmaps_com_free_1K.exr as shared by Mr.Kamal

The unwrapping methods used were:

• Project from View: flat room surfaces.

• Cube Projection: central cube and ceiling light fixture.

• Cylinder Projection: cylinder, with separate planar caps.

• Sphere Projection: Earth, Moon, HDRI, and glass spheres.

• Mark Seam + Unwrap: matte sphere, using a longitude seam and polar rings.
  
  
  

  

  
  Texture - Space Themed

  
  

  

  
  Texture - Moon Themed