Tiling Texture (brick): How to pack UVs do all sides of building walls look connected?

allengingrich

Obviously, I can just connect all the UV islands and do it that way, but then I can't pack my UVs very well. How else is this accomplished? It really kills the look when you go around a corner and the bricks don't line up at all on both sides.

musashidan

If you're using a tiling texture you could lay all the shells out horizontally and just let the uvs go off the side of 0-1. The map is tilling infinitely across all uv tiles so it will be seamless. You can match the corners in your 3d package viewport whilst adjusting the uvs in the editor.

Eric Chadwick

Yep. Also if you're using modular sections (you really should), then your UVs will line up anyhow, because each piece will be uniformly UVd to the same grid, same size bricks.

We have more info here
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Modular_environments

This one in particular addresses the brick issue, but all of the links on that page are important to check out.
Modular Environment Design.rar (12 MB) - by Kevin Johnstone

allengingrich

musashidan said:

If you're using a tiling texture you could lay all the shells out horizontally and just let the uvs go off the side of 0-1. The map is tilling infinitely across all uv tiles so it will be seamless. You can match the corners in your 3d package viewport whilst adjusting the uvs in the editor.

Thank you all. This is really helpful. Musa -- I can go off the UV grid? This made the most sense to me and what I had thought to do, but I wasn't sure if I could do that. What are the consequences of doing this?

musashidan

There are no consequences, mate. It's a technique often used on modular tiling assets as Eric said above. 0-1 is only strict when baking or using a painting program that ignores anything outside 0-1, but the engine, just like your 3d package uses uv space infinitely, tiling back on itself (with the exception of udims)

Quack!

musashidan said:

There are no consequences, mate. It's a technique often used on modular tiling assets as Eric said above. 0-1 is only strict when baking or using a painting program that ignores anything outside 0-1, but the engine, just like your 3d package uses uv space infinitely, tiling back on itself (with the exception of udims)

There are consequences of going off the grid.  If you travel to far out of the 0-1 space you will run in to floating point precision problems and your UV's will start to distort in a game engine.  It takes a fairly extreme amount of off-gridness to do this, but it is worth mentioning.

musashidan

Fair point @quack, but if your setup led you that far off grid then a reevaluation of tactics might be needed.

Mant1k0re

Kevin's presentation is super useful. More recently I thought this GDC pres completed it nicely: Ultimate Trim Technique.