Note that this is part 3 of our tutorial – you may need to start at the beginning.
UV mapping is the process of telling Blender (and ARDI) how to apply a texture to your model.
A texture is a flat, 2D image file. To be able to wrap it around your newly-created shape, you’ve got to tell it which points on the 3D model connect to which point on the 2D texture, and that’s exactly what the UV map does – it creates a 2D net of a 3D shape.
The key here is to identify the edges on your model – splitting it into areas that you’d like to paint individually.
Ambient Occlusion simulates the way that edges and corners tend to ‘catch’ light, creating areas of shade even when no shadow is being cast. Although your more powerful computer systems can now calculate AO in real-time, because ARDI targets low-end systems, we instead bake this information to a texture.
Although the effect of AO seems subtle when you’re creating your textures in later stages of the process, the effect that an AO map has on the realism of the scene is substantial.
Technical Term: “Baking” in a 3D application is when you take a calculation from your rendering package (ie. shadows, colours or ambient-occlusion) and write it to a texture. This results in some of your visual information being “Baked In” (ie. it won’t change without your intervention, even if you change the model or move it away from the sources of light).
Just after creating the UV maps is the ideal time to bake your AO data and save it somewhere for later.