How to Improve Textures

apollo580

I'm trying to figure out why my textures aren't looking as good in-game and substance painter as I want. I've shared my ship model a week or so ago and was hoping I can get some advice on how to improve. Are my UV's the issue? I used 2k textures split among 5 parts: main ship, cockpit, canopy, landing gear, and turrets. My goal is to get this sort of quality found in Arma 3 when Im standing really close up to the model in game:


Sadly my textures aren't as high resolution and I cant figure out why. Here are some screen captures:





Should I be splitting my model up into more texture sheets? One for the seat and dash for example? Or would this be a bad way due to performance in Unreal Engine or any engine for that matter?

I've attached a dropbox link (100MB) of my raw files for the main ship and cockpit, hopefully someone can comment on what my issue is.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gtvf85dgo58ylsc/AADXxPLuAXlYDDR7LfT6Jg8Va?dl=0

Here is the artstation link with the marmoset viewer: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/9VxrO

JHS

The problem is it doesn´t work that way anymore. To achieve that crisp texture you are looking for the tech made some steps further from the old "bake anything in one texture" workflow. The Arma example might still use bigger texturesets for different parts but isn´t the same tech would be choosen to create a spaceship. Look for hardsurface FWN and decal technic out there, it invests more into geometry instead of big textures. That what the normalmap had done will be achieved with beveled edges, while panellines are floating geometry which uses a repetative textureset.

Also the shader in engine are making up a lot of information you couldn´t bake into the basetexture. Like the noise on your ship surface, would be made with a tileable detailmap added on top.

apollo580

JHS said:

The problem is it doesn´t work that way anymore. To achieve that crisp texture you are looking for the tech made some steps further from the old "bake anything in one texture" workflow. The Arma example might still use bigger texturesets for different parts but isn´t the same tech would be choosen to create a spaceship. Look for hardsurface FWN and decal technic out there, it invests more into geometry instead of big textures. That what the normalmap had done will be achieved with beveled edges, while panellines are floating geometry which uses a repetative textureset.

Also the shader in engine are making up a lot of information you couldn´t bake into the basetexture. Like the noise on your ship surface, would be made with a tileable detailmap added on top.

Do these methods only apply to hard surface things? What about organic characters that have armour for example?

I've only heard about this type of workflow being used on Star Citizen, are there any other major titles that choose this sort of method?