UV mapping

The application of a texture in the UV space related to the effect in 3D.
A representation of the UV mapping of a cube. The flattened cube net may then be textured to texture the cube.

UV mapping is the 3D modeling process of projecting a 3D model's surface to a 2D image for texture mapping. The letters "U" and "V" denote the axes of the 2D texture because "X", "Y", and "Z" are already used to denote the axes of the 3D object in model space, while "W" (in addition to XYZ) is used in calculating quaternion rotations, a common operation in computer graphics.