Mapper Workspace


The Mapper workspace is used to set-up how texture maps and shaders are mapped to objects. Although there are limitations to how material channels can be animated, the way the materials are mapped to an object can be keyframed and animated.

Mapper Tools

There are 2 type of mapper tools. Tools that alter the texture or shader, and tools that determines a mapping style used to place or wrap the texture or shader on the object.

Material Altering Tools

These tools are used to deform, move and scale surface materials. They effect all the channels in the surface that use texture maps or shaders.

Liquify Tool: a standard brush that moves or scrambles the materials around, as though they are liquid. Great tool for breaking up patterns, repetition, or undesirable tiling.

Not Liquified

Lightly Liquified

Heavily Liquified

Drag Tool: a tool that moves the whole texture around. Positioning label and edges to specific parts of an object is one of the usages of this tool.

No Dragging

Dragged to Bottom

Dragged to Center

Scale Tool: sizes the material larger or smaller. Scaling textures and shaders can also be done in Materials workspace on the Texture or Shaders Options menu, along with tiling options. The way the tiling options are set up on the material menu will determine how the material will tile using the Mapper Scale Tool.

No Scaling

Scaled Smaller

Scaled Larger

Mapping Styles

There are three mapping styles in Amorphium, Planar, Cylindric, and Spheric.

Planar Tool: maps head on from the angle being viewed. Works best on Planes, flat objects. Will map the face and back side with the texture laying flat, stretching will occur on the other four sides.

Cylindric Tool: wraps the texture around the object like it's a cylinder, with stretching occurring along the top and bottom.

Spheric Tool: wraps the texture around the object like it's a sphere. With stretching occurring slightly on flat areas of the object.

The shape of the object or type of texture will determine how the material should be mapped in many instances. For example mapping a label to a cylinder may work best using planar, instead of cylindric.

Mapped Cylindric

Mapped Planar

Where mapping a wood texture on a cylinder may work better using cylindric mapping, because of the stretching that will occur along the sides when mapping planar to a round object.

Mapped Planar ( side view )

Mapped Cylindric ( side view )

The angle the object is viewed at when mapping will determine where the stretching will occur. For many instances rotating the view for mapping will eliminate unwanted stretching.

Mapped in front view ( planar )

Mapped in front view ( cylindric )

Mapped in front view ( spheric )

Rotating the view so three side are visible when mapping, will off set the texture but eliminate the stretching.

Mapped in a rotated view ( planar )

Mapped in a rotated view ( cylindric )

Mapped in a rotated view ( spheric )

With spheric and cylindric mapping there is a seam where the texture meets on the back side of the object. When animating objects rotating it may be necessary to use planar mapping even on a sphere so the seam isn't viewed in the animation.

No seam with planar mapping

Cylindric mapping seam

Spheric mapping seam

Exporting UVs

When objects are mapped in Amorphium, the UVs can be saved with some of the file types. FACT and 3Ds will write the UVs right into the file. All the mapping tools used on the object will determine the UVs. With the OBJ format a MTL file is wrote with the model file and it will contain all the UVs set-up in Amorphium by all the mapping tools. Texture maps do not need to be exported with the object for the UVs to be present.



This interface tutorial is written and provided by : Stephen Ray