When to use which texture maps on game assets?
polycounter lvl 6
Just have a few questions regarding texturing game assets.
I went over a digital tutors game assets tutorial and it was extremely helpful. It covered ndo, ddo2 and marmoset. All really helpful things to know and quite impressive tools!
I guess I just have a few questions regarding when to use what and when to bake occlusion etc. The tutorial didnt even mention occlusion maps at all. When should they be used? Do game assets usually use occlusion maps or just diffuse/spec/normal? Is this just a judgement thing? Occlusion maps only really used for high poly?
The tutorial also didnt mention any high to low poly normal baking. Are most game assets just only modeled in low poly anyway? Im assuming all the high to low poly stuff is mainly for mesh that has a lot of detail or needs a lot of detail (characters, vehicles, etc.). Also confused when to use floating geometry. I watched a tutorial earlier where floating geometry was used, but the piece that was modeled as the floating piece wasnt even that high poly and didnt look like it would make a big difference if it was on the actual model or not. Is it more like 'just save polys wherever you can?'
Sorry for the confusion, hope this is clear.
I went over a digital tutors game assets tutorial and it was extremely helpful. It covered ndo, ddo2 and marmoset. All really helpful things to know and quite impressive tools!
I guess I just have a few questions regarding when to use what and when to bake occlusion etc. The tutorial didnt even mention occlusion maps at all. When should they be used? Do game assets usually use occlusion maps or just diffuse/spec/normal? Is this just a judgement thing? Occlusion maps only really used for high poly?
The tutorial also didnt mention any high to low poly normal baking. Are most game assets just only modeled in low poly anyway? Im assuming all the high to low poly stuff is mainly for mesh that has a lot of detail or needs a lot of detail (characters, vehicles, etc.). Also confused when to use floating geometry. I watched a tutorial earlier where floating geometry was used, but the piece that was modeled as the floating piece wasnt even that high poly and didnt look like it would make a big difference if it was on the actual model or not. Is it more like 'just save polys wherever you can?'
Sorry for the confusion, hope this is clear.
Replies
Not everything need to be baked. I don't know what the tutorial showed but for simpler props you can just use tiling textures and paint in variation via vertex colors. But as you say for more detailed models like characters and vehicles you'll most probably need a highpoly.