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Hi,

I have a very basic question but can't seem to find an answer.

How do you map graphics for a book (cover, back and spine) onto a 3d model of a book?
I use Maxwell Studio, with the book modelled in Sketchup/ downloaded from various 3d model sites.

Can this be done in Maxwell Studio? I have tried using channels and planar UV maps but it is very tedious and slow.

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum - really not sure where the question fits. Thanks in advance for any help.

you must first add texture in 3d software

Thanks Seghier,

I thought this was the case. Looks like I'll be trying 3DSmax/Rhino or blender. Can you recommend/suggest which is simple to learn for UV mapping basic forms (ie. boxes)?

Thanks again.

blender is better ; you unwrap the model than apply texture
search and you will find many tutorials about uv mapping in blender

You can just model front cover, spine, back cover as one surface and the three sides of the book block as another surface in Rhino, and then apply a UV-mapping with Properties > Texture Mapping > Apply Surface Mapping to both surfaces. In Studio, you can pick the triangles and make a triangle group for both and then assign a MXM to each. If you make a very thick book block image, you can shift it about for several books so they look realistically dissimilar with only one MXM. This is how I do it with Alias, Rhino or Creo data.

Thanks Sigher & Feynman,

I tried a couple of plugins for sketchup before trying another platform: SketchUV worked really well.

The only downside to this is it doesn't handle small (3mm) radii on the spine well, but as a block it works fine. Are small radii an issue with all box based UV mapping?
Feynman, does your rhino method wrap the texture around corners like this?

If you build the front, spine and back as one single surface, as I suggested, the surface texture applied to it wraps around it; a surface texture basically "stretches" to fill the surface entirely. This is why the graphic you want to map on your book needs to have the same size proportion as the surface to be mapped onto, otherwise it will appear distorted.