Struggling with Faces and Texture Mapping

[neljoshua]

Disclaimer: I am trying to do some stuff that I have not messed with before (learning is fun!), so I may be totally off-base here. I have precious little knowledge in this area.

I am attempting to do some full-color, textured 3D printing. The workflow I am trying to use does not produce the result I want. Here is what I am doing:

1. Create the model in Fusion 360 (https://a360.co/33Aru7t)
2. Export it as an STL
3. Open it in Photoshop and apply color and texture to faces

I can import the STL into Photoshop and it looks ok at first:

There are, however, issues when trying to apply textures to the faces, as the result looks like this in Photoshop:

It is difficult to determine which face goes where and practically impossible for me to correctly line up and apply images & textures. Here is the basic idea of what I am trying to do.

This is all going to a 3D print software (GrabCAD Print) in the end, so I could in theory use the OBJ format. Unfortunately, I learned here that Fusion 360 does not export texture information (as it seems it should). I could also work with 3MF or VRML files, but these are not currently export options.

So, now I am stuck. I do not know how to export from Fusion 360 (and import into Photoshop) without creating a triangulated mesh. Here are my questions:

1. Is there a way to export from Fusion 360 without converting planar faces into triangles?
2. Could I somehow remove/combine the triangles from the model and then export it? I tried working with this a bit, but did not get anywhere. It seems I can only delete (not combine) faces.
3. Is there any hope Fusion 360 exporting textures with OBJ (or another format)?
4. Is this workflow incorrect? It is totally possible that I am doing it wrong...

Thanks in advance.

[TrippyLighting · Accepted solution]

Forget trying to that in Fusion 360!

The term you are looking for is UV mapping.

Export the file as a .obj (or .stl) and then import this into Blender, for example.

There you  UV unwrap the geometry and export the map as an image, which you can then edit in photoshop and add the texture information.

That you can then re-apply as a texture in the UV editor in Blender. If you want to have an actual 3D texture you need to have enough resolution in the mesh to be able to do displacement mapping, but then also need some form or a bump map or normal map. You might be able to create that from the image texture in Photoshop.

[neljoshua]

@TrippyLighting,

Thanks for the guidance! I had seen the term "UV Mapping" but was not certain that is what I wanted.

I guess this explains why I was having problems in Fusion 360...

Now the question is if I can merge the UV geometry in another application. I know how to apply textures and bump mapping in Photoshop, but not how to combine the UV geometry. I guess that is my next step.