Help with modular workflow
polycounter lvl 11
Hi PC,
I have a question concerning modular environment workflow. I have been working on this scene and I have attached 2 images where the first shows the complete scene and the second one shows what repeated geometry I have removed and planned to use as modular pieces (to also maximize texture density on the UVs) to replicate after the texturing phase is completed (I marked few of the repeating geo in red such as bolts, floor, roof, sidewalls etc...).
As I am in the process of planning out the textures to use, I was wondering how to approach that while maintaining the modular workflow? A quick AO bake of the scene using xNormal gives me the results I want but then duplicating the floor for example, it will show the shadows of objects such as the pylon on all the repeated sections of the floor. I also tried creating the floor by duplicating that sections and attaching it, then moving out the overlapping UVs of the 0-1 grid and baking out the AO but all the floor sections still contain shadows that are part of that original section of the floor.
I have been searching the net for a solution and I did come across some excellent tutorials on modular workflows, but I am not sure how to apply that to my particular scene.
Any suggestions are very much appreciated.
I have a question concerning modular environment workflow. I have been working on this scene and I have attached 2 images where the first shows the complete scene and the second one shows what repeated geometry I have removed and planned to use as modular pieces (to also maximize texture density on the UVs) to replicate after the texturing phase is completed (I marked few of the repeating geo in red such as bolts, floor, roof, sidewalls etc...).
As I am in the process of planning out the textures to use, I was wondering how to approach that while maintaining the modular workflow? A quick AO bake of the scene using xNormal gives me the results I want but then duplicating the floor for example, it will show the shadows of objects such as the pylon on all the repeated sections of the floor. I also tried creating the floor by duplicating that sections and attaching it, then moving out the overlapping UVs of the 0-1 grid and baking out the AO but all the floor sections still contain shadows that are part of that original section of the floor.
I have been searching the net for a solution and I did come across some excellent tutorials on modular workflows, but I am not sure how to apply that to my particular scene.
Any suggestions are very much appreciated.
Replies
Often an engine with baked lighting will work something like this: modular pieces have their normal UV unwraps, but may also have an additional UV channel for a light map unwrap. You can use the first unwrap so long as every part of the modular piece is unwrapped to a unique region of the 0..1 UV space, and fits entirely in that box. That's the part you create as an artist, and that's mostly all you need to set up. Behind the scenes, the engine creates a big light map texture and each instance of your meshes gets assigned a small chunk of that space.
How you actually achieve this depends on what engine workflow you're trying to get into. I'd pick one and then try to make assets for it. Unreal or CryEngine are good choices. Here's the UDK reference on light mapping: http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/LightMapUnwrapping.html CryEngine doesn't use baked lighting - it's all dynamic - so its asset creation is different. http://freesdk.crydev.net/display/SDKDOC4/Lighting+Concepts
Great links BTW.
SSAO will do some of that. You could also use decals or something, for the AO-Style shadows, but I'm not sure how well that would work.