Week 6 Class Practical: Part 2 - Projection Mapping Exercise

Now that I have been introduced to projection maps and the different types of mapping available, this weeks practical has a small exercise to complete regarding this type of mapping. To begin, I created a cube and I will try all of the different types of projection mapping on the cube, observe their differences and comment on their potential uses. First is the "Cylindrical" mapping that we used in the last blog post.

When a cylindrical map is applied to a cube it actually does a good job of aligning the faces around the object with the exception of the top and bottom. The textures at the top and bottom appear to be stretched out from the colours as they are touching the edge, moving diagonally through the top/bottom faces. This produces and interesting effect that (given the right adjustments) could be used to create an angled texture. The next type of projection mapping we will try is "Planar" mapping.

This type of mapping appears to apply the texture to one face and then "blast" it through the rest of the object. This type of mapping is different from the others as the texture is only focused on 1 face and "moves" through the object instead of wrapping around it. This type of mapping could be very useful when you need to create a layered texture that is consistent throughout. The last type of mapping I will be trying out is "Spherical" mapping.

When applied to a cube this type of mapping is almost identical in characteristics to the cylindrical mapping we applied earlier. After trying these different projection mapping techniques on a cube, I will also try them on a sphere and a cylinder shape to see how they differ in application. To begin, I will try out cylindrical mapping on both of these shapes and observe the differences.

Applying cylindrical mapping to both of these objects appears to have a similar effect. On the sphere however, as the texture starts to reach the top, the texture stretches to a point in the middle where the texture becomes "wavy". The effect is less prominent on the sphere when a spherical map is applied (as shown below). 

What does happen however is that when a spherical map is applied to a cylindrical object, the top and bottom faces become extremely messed up, as shown above. The final type I will be applying is planar mapping.

With planar mapping applied to both of these objects, the projection map attempts to blast the texture through the image with mixed results. This type of mapping definitely applies more neatly on a cylindrical object than a sphere, however both produce interesting and somewhat unexpected results. My observation is that with any of these types of projection mapping, they aren't perfect. You will still need to go into the settings and adjust the mapping to create the effect required, possibly having to map textures to different faces on the same object to create the desired effect. 

Below I have applied a cylindrical map to the cylinder object but applied planar mapping on the top and bottom faces to illustrate this point.