Equal texel density vs filling up the uv sheet
polycounter lvl 9
I've run into a bit of a snag. I didn't take into account the texel density and as such have forced myself into going back to redo the uvs and bakes. Here's my current state of uneven texel distribution
I'm aware the uneven texel density comes from me trying to take up as much uv space as possible without considering the impact it would have on the texture resolution. I also know that the best thing to do when laying out a texture sheet is to give as much space to the important, more seen areas of a model. No point in give more or equal uv space to something that's either hidden or just not important in size or scope.
Here's my attempt to even this distribution out
I'm in the process of regrouping the components I originally had attached together and repacking their uvs. I originally had 3 separate texture sheets for this carousel. Here's the issue I've run into.
I obviously want to maintain as equal of a distribution as I can, though it's not possible to sustain it 100%. With that said, by scaling the uvs to fit in this space I'm again sacrificing the even texel density. I'm baking everything so I need to also think about the baking and keeping a good uv size for that. This is one of the groups I just attached back together, but you can see what normalizing the uvs has done.
By scaling them to fit the uv sheet I'm in essence undoing what I just did and reverting back to my initial model. I can scale these up to fit, but I can't scale the other uv sheet I showed.
Am I trying to force to much onto one texture sheet? People of Polycount I call upon you once more. Help!
I'm aware the uneven texel density comes from me trying to take up as much uv space as possible without considering the impact it would have on the texture resolution. I also know that the best thing to do when laying out a texture sheet is to give as much space to the important, more seen areas of a model. No point in give more or equal uv space to something that's either hidden or just not important in size or scope.
Here's my attempt to even this distribution out
I'm in the process of regrouping the components I originally had attached together and repacking their uvs. I originally had 3 separate texture sheets for this carousel. Here's the issue I've run into.
I obviously want to maintain as equal of a distribution as I can, though it's not possible to sustain it 100%. With that said, by scaling the uvs to fit in this space I'm again sacrificing the even texel density. I'm baking everything so I need to also think about the baking and keeping a good uv size for that. This is one of the groups I just attached back together, but you can see what normalizing the uvs has done.
By scaling them to fit the uv sheet I'm in essence undoing what I just did and reverting back to my initial model. I can scale these up to fit, but I can't scale the other uv sheet I showed.
Am I trying to force to much onto one texture sheet? People of Polycount I call upon you once more. Help!
Replies
Also, "nobody will notice them" isn't really a good thing to do in practice for a surface that large, and definitely not good for a portfolio piece. I mean sometimes you have to make compromises when there are deadlines, but the largest, cleanest portion of your model is probably not a good place to make those compromises
You're right about that last part though haha. I shouldn't think that way. No one wants to play a game or watch a movie knowing the designer hopes you don't see his/her errors.
I'm a tad closer to getting my texel issue resolved. Instancing the parts has helped uv space significantly. Any other advice? It's been aces so far :thumbup:
What I would do instead would be to just place a single seam along one of the edges and do a conformal unwrap from that (I believe it's called pelt mapping in Max, I use Blender thnough so I might be wrong). The resulting unwrap won't be as easy to pack on the UV sheet but it'll result in more even texels and less stretching. Here's what my attempt looks like:
Now consider matching individual object to one another. Ideally all pixels will be the same size on the screen, you don't want an ultra sharp prop sitting next to an ultra blurry one so their textel density needs to match as closely as possible.
If your game has 4px for every 1unit how big do you make your textures, how do you scale your UV's. at that point you start calculating the surface area of the objects and finding out how many units you have to cover, until your head explodes... and you go back to just making it work the best you can, checking it as often as possible along the process to make sure you aren't screwing yourself over.
Nosslak - I found a script that equalizes the texel density which is a time saver. You can pick a the uvs that you've scaled to be the density you want the rest of the meshes to match or just use a default density. It doesn't look like it equalized them 100%. I know the end result won't be 100% anyways.
I did redo the uvs the way I had them originally just to make texturing easier, but I also was hoping by having more uv space to work with would allow me to match the texel density better. You're right that it didn't do that at all. Basically I'm in the same spot I was in before since the only thing that's changed is how much uv space I have.
Equal yet horrible uv shell sizes.
This uv size won't work. The normal map resolution will be horrible, and texturing will be a pain. If I scale them up to fill uv space it'll be like how they were in my first post :poly118: The top carousel uv's need to be scaled outside the uv space more if I were to scale these now tiny uvs up to where they should be.