Hi everyone, I'm a seasoned c# dev so lots to draw from generally but graphics/game dev have not been my area of expertise.

I would like to be able to take a 2d image/drawing and overlay it onto a 3d model with as best a fit as possible. I'm not talking complex models - something reasonably straightforward / 2D-ish.

Any recommended applications for deconstructing the texture map programmatically?

Or is there a simpler approach anyone can think of?

Thanks!

This generally goes by the name of "UV mapping" and is a whole chunk of mathematics unto itself. It has close relationships with projections - as in the transformations used to get a 2D map of a 3D planet, although obviously you want to go the opposite direction.

Put simply there is no single perfect solution to all variations of this problem. Most of the time it is solved by just throwing human brain power at it - that is, having an artist construct a UV map by hand.

Thanks very much ApochPiQ.

Honestly...it is much easier to go the other direction with this.  The 'easy' way is to just make a viable UV map, and then copy/paste the image onto the UV map at the right spots.  The likely easiest way is to make a UV map, and use software like Substance Painter to paint textures directly onto the model(which makes the UVs not have to be as perfect since you paint directly on the model and it can handle projecting the images despite some UV distortion.  You can also use Blender's texture paint for this purpose(but with less features).