In Maya, UV texture coordinates (UVs) can be created for polygon surface meshes using the following UV mapping techniques:
- Automatic UV mapping
- Planar UV mapping
- Cylindrical UV mapping
- Spherical UV mapping
- User-defined UV mapping
- Best Plane mapping
- Camera UV mapping - see Planar UV mapping
Each UV mapping technique produces UV texture coordinates for the surface mesh by projecting them onto the surface mesh based on its inherent projection method. However, the initial mapping produced via the above UV mapping techniques does not usually produce the final UV arrangement that is required for a texture. As a result, you will often need to perform further editing operations on the UVs using the UV Editor. It is best to map UVs onto a model only when the it is complete.
Note: Polygon and subdivision surface primitives have default UV texture coordinates that can be used for texture mapping. However, if you modify the default primitives in any way (that is, scale, extrude faces, insert or delete edges) you will need to map a new set of UV texture coordinates onto the object to suit your texture mapping requirements.
