Unwrapping Environments

martynball

Hey, I have not unwrapped an environment before. What is the best way to do it? AO isn't needed as using CryENGINE3 is being used so that is calculated in realtime.

So does this mean that I should unwrap each part of the mesh that has the same material and place them all on top of each other, so overlap all of the UV's, as this would save space seeming as they all use the same texture.

Or should I give each part it's own UV space and just duplicate the texture around, which would allow for unique walls ect.. but I would need a 8k texture map to keep all of the textures crisp and high quality.

Below is a part of the mesh:


Here is a screenshot of the scene i'm recreating, you can see the part I have made to the left:

osman

I'd say, to take the concrete walls as an example, unwrap it so that they can share a single tiling texture( or perhaps 2 variations of it if you want a little bit more..variation) and then use decals or other techniques such as blending dirt textures based on vertex colors, to add some dirt and grime to it.

LMP

martynball wrote: »

Hey, I have not unwrapped an environment before. What is the best way to do it? AO isn't needed as using CryENGINE3 is being used so that is calculated in realtime.

So does this mean that I should unwrap each part of the mesh that has the same material and place them all on top of each other, so overlap all of the UV's, as this would save space seeming as they all use the same texture.

Or should I give each part it's own UV space and just duplicate the texture around, which would allow for unique walls ect.. but I would need a 8k texture map to keep all of the textures crisp and high quality.

Below is a part of the mesh:


Here is a screenshot of the scene i'm recreating, you can see the part I have made to the left:

Mostly tiling textures, in your example the things that don't tile, are the barrels, though the barrel is reused. The beige cylinder on the left side, and the foliage. The tre trunks do tile though. Most of the variation work is done with lighting and decals.

martynball

Okay thanks, can CryENGINE3 use multiple textures on one shader ? If not I would need to separate my mesh

Ark

Yeah it can, use a multi sub object, but remember more you add, the more drawcalls.

Chase

How many textures is too many to load in a multi sub object before you should just create another material?

meathead

Chase I max my ones on around 1-4 no more But from my experience you can do up to 8 easy and for a 8k texture map that is HUGE! even for crysis engine

Chase

Thanks meat! Do you have a general run down of when you use a multi sub obj? i usually will apply one when I export the mesh and texture to UDK but I've never started one by loading the textures first. It's the same idea right haha