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Is there any way to texture without a UV?

Easton
Easton
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Easton vertex
What are all of the ways to add textures to an object and in particular a ground poly? I know there are UVW Unwraps and UV Maps, but is there any way to texture without a UV for something like a terrain or road or something?

For example I found some YouTube videos of some people making roads in Photoshop but they did not have a UV, how would this work? I know I need to start following these methods but I have no idea yet as to how this works as a model.

https://youtu.be/2G3Yz8--GvI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVx_98izuog&t=1153s
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  • Lord Fryingpan
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    Lord Fryingpan polycounter lvl 12
    You can make it so the shader you use takes the XY world coordinates as the texture UVs, although it probably won't work for roads, only terrain.


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  • Axi5
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    Axi5 interpolator
    Those videos you're showing are people creating textures that would be used on a UV model...

    If you're using splines or some other parametric shapes you can generate the UVs quite easily, i.e. a swept shape, and this can be done in code easily too.

    There's also PTEX which is for VFX and most software doesn't support it fully.

    Honestly just learn to UV man.
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  • Easton
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    Easton vertex
    Not sure how they would apply the whole road to a plane without stretching the textures...

    I am trying to learn everything, any way there is to texture something because I know there are multiple ways to do something and I do not want to get stuck doing something wrong or inefficiently. I am not trying to get out of UV unwrapping. I know how to UV as well.

    Thanks
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  • Obscura
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    Obscura grand marshal polycounter
    That much stretching is totally fine. Also there isn't really a way to avoid it, other than making the signs as decals, so people just live with the little stretching that noone notices anyways.
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  • RN
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    RN sublime tool
    You need to somehow map a 2D image to the surface of a 3D mesh. Whether you use UV-mapped or procedural (aka "generated") texture coords, that's up to you.
    An example of procedural tex coords: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-ImplementingTexGen.html

    edit --- Ugh, shouldn't write when sick...
    You are always using UVs.
    These UVs can be manually set (when you unwrap your mesh in a 3D software) or computed with code (the procedural way). Doing things procedurally allows you to change the UVs in real-time to get some specific effects, like ripply water reflections etc.
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