Why you should UVW Map

This post will be a short one, I'm just currently exploring UVW Mapping, 'the boring part of modelling'.

UVW Mapping is the process of unwrapping all the faces of your model, and placing them into a texture sheet. You can then put that into photoshop and see the outline of your models faces, and then apply textures to the applicable areas.

My question while doing all of this was when creating such a primitive model with a primitive texture to apply, why is this needed when you can simply apply the texture directly to the model?

Let's take a look:

Above is the UVW Map before it has any textures applied to it, the outlines you see (though through messy geometry work aren't very good) are the actual outlines of the model. This means that you can apply your texture to the correct part of your model and gather an idea of what it will look like in 3D.

With my basic of basic skills, I just grabbed a texture from CGTextures and slapped it onto the UVW Wrap. Then, I took this UVW Map into 3DS Max and applied it to my model. Upon which, I was happy with the result. But I wanted to see how it would look without the UVW (i.e. just the texture on its own).





Below is the result with a UVW Map:




And then, I deleted the UVW Map. This really cleared up any confusion I had as to why UVW Mapping is essential when texturing:


The images alone should provide sufficient evidence as to why you should UVW Map your model and then texture it.