Question about efficiency for texturing a minivan

BARDLER

I have to model and texture a minivan which is like 30% windows, and I was trying to think what the best way to approach it is.

I feel like putting them on the main texture flat and using an alpha is a massive waste of resources because they don't require a lot of texture space. So I am thinking that have a 1024 for my vehicle and a 256 for my windows would be the best thing to do. Also windows do not really need normal maps right?

Another thing is will my normal maps get messed up if I make the left and right side share UV space, but make the center of the vehicle unique? or is that a bad idea?

Can anybody give me some tips or thoughts? Thanks!

Nosslak

BARDLER wrote: »

I have to model and texture a minivan which is like 30% windows, and I was trying to think what the best way to approach it is.

I feel like putting them on the main texture flat and using an alpha is a massive waste of resources because they don't require a lot of texture space. So I am thinking that have a 1024 for my vehicle and a 256 for my windows would be the best thing to do.

It could save some resources potentially, but you'll get an additional drawcall instead, so I'm not really sure.

Also windows do not really need normal maps right?

No, as long as you're making the windows as separate floating pieces they shouldn't need normal mapping. They'd only really need it to compensate for bad smoothing.

Another thing is will my normal maps get messed up if I make the left and right side share UV space, but make the center of the vehicle unique? or is that a bad idea?

You'll need a special shader that takes normal mirroring in consideration for it to work properly. In most engines I think you'll need to offset your mirrored UVs outside the regular UV-space.

Mik2121

If it's a very old window and some of the grass is broken or the glass is somewhat warped or something, you might want to use some normal maps, but if it's a normal window, yeah, no need really :P