Soda Can UV Mapping and Texturing

January 10, 2013

Today I wanted to work on the UVW mapping and texturing for the soda can model I made the other day. The soda can was a hard task as it was, due to my minimal knowledge and skill set within 3DS Max. I started out by opening my model and putting the Unwrap UVW modifier on it. Since the can is mostly cylindrical, with a flat portion on the top and bottom and some flared edges at the top and bottom, I decided to map the UVs for the can body by themselves in a cylindrical manner. I also decided to map the flared edges on the top and bottom with the body as well, as when I tried it earlier they just came out looking weird.

The UV Mapping itself was not very difficult once I started getting results I liked. I just chose to map the can body and flared edges as one unit, the top cover of the can, bottom cover of the can and the sides to the top cover, as the top cover was extruded from the can body. The can body I did with a cylindrical mapping, the top cover and bottom cover were done with planar maps and the top cover sides were done with a cylindrical mapping.

As shown in the picture above, I chose not to stitch or weld anything together. It was much easier for me to just break them all apart into the sections I wanted and place them accordingly. It also made painting much, much simpler. Here is what the final texture looks like (excuse my lack of artistic ability. I was going for the feel of a Coke can without having to write out Coca-Cola or find a can texture. Also had to change filetype to a JPEG, as Blogger doesn't accept .tga filetypes).

The completed model, with texture applied looks like this. I know there is a little silver in the red area, but I am no artist.

In hindsight, I should have UV mapped the flared edges on their own. it would have kept me from getting that little bit of silver in the red area of the can body, and would have looked a lot cleaner.