Painting very high resolution textures workflow?
polycounter lvl 10
Hi guys, I want to ask if anyone has an idea of how one can go about creating very high resolution mesh of like up 24k. I have a ground plane I want to paint every inch and square of it. I know it sounds ridiculous but I am trying to achieve hyper photorealism and its for experimentation as well.
At the moment, I use Viewport Canvas for painting my textures. If u were to go about this, I am guessing the best solution is to cut the ground plane into smaller pieces with each part about 2048 x2048 since Viewport Canvas seems to have issues if texture resolutions are higher and then assign them to different materials. But I am thinking if there is a way to manage this that it won't involve too many materials as that will increase render time.
I was thinking of using different uv channels assigned to differernt patches but it can get extremely confusing especially when u have a lot of maps making up one big ground plane and you can't display the textures of the other patches if u need to paint with reference to them.
At the moment, I use Viewport Canvas for painting my textures. If u were to go about this, I am guessing the best solution is to cut the ground plane into smaller pieces with each part about 2048 x2048 since Viewport Canvas seems to have issues if texture resolutions are higher and then assign them to different materials. But I am thinking if there is a way to manage this that it won't involve too many materials as that will increase render time.
I was thinking of using different uv channels assigned to differernt patches but it can get extremely confusing especially when u have a lot of maps making up one big ground plane and you can't display the textures of the other patches if u need to paint with reference to them.
Replies
http://store.steampowered.com/app/289550/
^ Good painting tools, layer system, and shaders, up to 6x 4k textures that you can easily paint across all at once, which might be enough resolution. Projection paint only, but gives you the tools you need to deal with the shortcomings of projection painting. $13 for a month.
http://www.autodesk.com/products/mudbox/overview
^ Middling painting tools, with a pretty good projection workflow with 2d programs. Can paint as many tiles as your computer can handle. In Window->Preferences->Paint be sure to turn up Brush Sample Area which makes painting way, way better. Projection painting and painting straight on the model both work. $10 for a month.
https://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/mari/
^ Same as Mari Indie but with fewer silly limitations. Way expensive for just a test piece, wouldn't recommend for now.
Most real-time renderers don't support multi-tile textures well, except maybe Unity with Amplify Texture 2 which I haven't tried yet. Vray, Mental Ray, Renderman, Arnold and probably some other offline renderers support multi-tile textures well.
And of course you will want to use detailed displacement/normal mapping and decent reflection/glossiness maps.
And lastly, don't forget: no matter how high-res your textures they are only as good as the maps they are derived from(think 4K image from google that looks shitty and blurred at 100%) I would highly recommend checking out surface mimic texture library.
P.S - stop using viewport canvas!! It is terrible, and hasn't been updated AT ALL since Max2012(when it was introduced)....
http://polycount.com/discussion/162571/shaderfx-trying-to-use-texture-maps-with-a-for-loop-possible
To my knowledge I don't think you can get a ShaderFX to auto-update a texture in any easy manner. Might be possible to create a solution for this by script(scriptjobs?) though.
Edit:
-------------------------------
Oh Viewport Canvas is 3DSMax? Never mind then
Kodde, your shaderFX setup looks interesting. I'm sure the .sfx file from Maya could be imported to Max?
By the way, I ran into issues with my GPU RAM being exceeded when trying for 4x4 8k textures. 4x4 4k textures worked fine. Maya could handle a 16k texture either way so in that sense it was kind of pointless. But if you're bound to a tile based workflow and want to use ShaderFX this shader could be useful.
its containing 1168 uvtiles each 2k... its baking all the texture to smaller resolution... maybe you could use this system to load it also in shader fx..?
note: im able to paint on this monster asset in mudbox...
EDIT:
--------------------------------------
Red, object turns red when you run out of GPU RAM. At least I suppose that's what's happening.
kostas.se/files/multi_tile_system.rar
That doesn't mean I won't try some of the things you have suggested. Btw, lets say I want only a particular group of uv shells in one uv channel. Is there a way I can delete the remaining uv shells so they are not on that channel and take up space?
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?189837-Portrait-of-JFK
This is what I am aiming for. Does anyone have an idea how he went about texturing this? I have a feeling he used ZBrush polypaint. Cause there is no way any app can support that high level of detail?? He didn't mention any other software apart from Maya and ZBrush. I am guessing he approached this with a traditional sculptor's concept? Every texture was painted on the model?? I wonder if he used mask for stuff like the skin pores, wrinkes when texturing? It would be nice if these zbrush guys share how they approach texturing their high res models.
I checked out his blog to see if I could get any information but it is another language.
Another excellent work using just Zbrush only-
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?197687&p=1162932&viewfull=1#post1162932
Any Ideas?