Texture coordinates
UV Mapping
UV coordinates are a separate 2D representation of the mesh "unfolded" to show what portion of a 2-dimensional texture map to apply to different polygons of the mesh. It is also possible for meshes to contain other such vertex attribute information such as color, tangent vectors, weight maps to control animation, etc (sometimes also called channels).
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.
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 may then be textured to texture the cube.
